Sustainability & Climate Change
Food production needs are expected to roughly double over the next 35 years as the world population grows and people in under developed countries become more affluent and demand more calories. Healthy ecosystems are vital to the survival of all organisms. How can we grow crops without harming the environment? How can we balance technology and global food security? What is the right balance of organic and conventional farming? What role can genetics and biotechnology play without compromising the needs of tomorrow?
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Cellular agriculture: WIll synthetically-developed coffee, cultured meat and bioreactor-based dairy soften impacts of climate change, as supporters claim?
Cellular agriculture is committed to producing agricultural foods using a combination of synthetic biology, biotechnology, molecular biology and tissue engineering ...
‘No conservation concern with honey bees’: Xerces Society debunks claims that honey bees threatened but raises extinction concerns about some wild species
Around 2006, beekeepers started reporting huge losses of honey bee colonies. “That rang alarm bells,” said James Cane, a bee ...
Viewpoint: Why food security is central to national security — And why the EU Green Deal Farm to Fork strategy is the wrong approach
A recent poll of U.S. consumers found that nearly 72 percent were concerned for food availability during the early days ...
Hi-tech coatings and other ways to help slow spoiling of fruits and vegetables
The problem of rotting apples and mouldering grain may have been a matter of season-to-season survival for our ancestors. Today ...
‘Like turning a golf ball into string’: Making meat substitutes is not easy
If you’re an environmentally aware meat-eater, you probably carry at least a little guilt to the dinner table. The meat ...
A GM solution to help address climate change: Genetic tweak tailors rice to survive increasing salt and temperature levels
Genetically engineering rice to have better salt tolerance could allow it to be grown in places it would otherwise fail, ...
First bee vaccine: USDA okays oral vaccine for foulbrood disease that’s devastating bee populations
Some hopeful news has come from the United States about the future of bees, vital pollinator insects that often fall victim ...
Viewpoint: Tapping the breaks on regulatory overreach — How administrative bloat set up roadblocks for crop innovation
The EPA’s “plant regulator” definition has caused alarm in the relatively new plant biostimulant industry because some of its products ...
Viewpoint: What the US can learn from Sri Lanka’s disastrous ‘green’ embrace of anti-GMO hysteria?
Since Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948, its agricultural policies focused on reaching self-sufficiency in food production. Thanks to chemical fertilizers, pesticides, modern ...
Precision animal breeding: How gene editing could revolutionize animal agriculture and disease control
Given my interests as a veterinarian, indeed the only vet in the House of Lords, my contribution to the Second ...
How digital innovations can spur a Fourth Agricultural Revolution
Two billion people in the world currently suffer from malnutrition and according to some estimates, we need 60% more food ...
Viewpoint: Indigenous historical wisdom can play a key role in developing sustainable food systems
In the past century, Indigenous knowledge has been dismissed in different ways. Take the Green Revolution, a vast increase in ...
Food waste revolution? How upcycled garbage can help build a more sustainable future
Edible by-products from food manufacturing are a potential resource that can be tapped to sustainably increase food supply, reduce obesity ...
Neonicotinoids are restricted or banned in some European countries. Why is it so hard to find safer and more effective alternative pesticides?
The [French] government has just issued a decree authorizing, by way of exemption, the use in 2023 of sugar beet ...
‘We’re in the biotech era’: The push to make cattle and dairy production more sustainable
With rising temperatures and worsening drought, scientists are dreaming up ways to ensure farming and agriculture can be better for ...
Viewpoint: Changing mindsets — Organic agriculture is less efficient than conventional farming and has a larger carbon footprint
The United Nations recently confirmed that the world population has officially reached 8 billion. However, what should be a celebration ...
Viewpoint: Could crop biotechnology mitigate dislocations from climate change? Anti-GMO activists say ‘no’. Here’s why they are wrong
We’ve heard a lot about climate change, and its impact on crops, especially in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the ...
Heat-tolerant wheat: How we can increase yields of this staple crop despite rising temperatures
Wheat now provides 20% of the calories consumed by humans every day, but its production is under threat. Thanks to human-induced ...
Viewpoint: Plant-based foods need tighter environmental and regulatory scrutiny
So far, research on meat substitutes has emphasised commercialisation, technological enhancements and lowering costs, with little attention paid to regulatory ...
Why biodiversity is so essential to pollinator health
Biodiversity is essential for effective crop production and the health of our natural resources. It sustains the ecosystems that underpin ...
Next generation climate-sensitive agriculture: Slew of CRISPR crops are in development that limit buildup of carbon in the atmosphere
There is a push to use CRISPR to make agricultural technologies that pull carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air and store ...
Viewpoint: Can large-scale agriculture overcome stigma it is not sustainable? Here’s a 10-step regulatory guide to make that happen
Regulators seem blissfully unaware, especially in Brussels, how much their pandering to the idealistic aspirations of small environmental activist groups ...
Unlike most of the rest of the world, the European Union uses 30-year old ‘precautionary principle’ to regulate GMOs and gene editing, effectively banning them. Here is a primer
The European Union (EU) has been at the forefront of the debate around genetically modified organisms (GMOs), with the region implementing a ...
Podcast: Preventing crop damage from pests, diseases, and weeds? Here’s why South African farmers ‘can’t afford to overlook biotech seeds’
On this week’s episode of Farmer’s Inside Track, Chantel Arendse, the lead for plant biotechnology at CropLife SA, joins us ...
Video: Darling 58 American chestnut tree — Tik Tok video addresses deploying genetic modification to restore one of America’s most ecologically valuable keystone species
A genetically modified American chestnut tree is being reviewed for deregulation! The public comment period is open until 12/27/22 ...
European Council of Young Farmers: Why the European Parliament should approve use of CRISPR and other New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) in plants
Based on the strong belief that there is no single pathway to sustainability in agriculture, new genomic techniques (NGTs) – ...
427,000 global deaths a year? Study claims bee decline stunts yields of fruits, vegetables and nuts
The global decline of bees and other pollinators is stunting yields of fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Scientists estimate that the ...
