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?
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
Viewpoint: King Charles’ resistance to crop biotechnology has been a royal pain. Can the former ‘Dunce of Wales’ shuck organic propaganda and embrace sustainable agriculture?
King Charles III has repeatedly demonstrated some of the pitfalls of the inbreeding that has plagued the royal families of ...
Viewpoint: How to build a plant-based food system? Legislate, deregulate and flood the supermarket with vegan products
Imagine a world where plants, not animals, are the foundation of a resilient, sustainable food system that benefits not only ...
Fighting herbicide-resistant weeds: Statin molecule found in fungi (and common cholesterol medication) could be ‘as effective as glyphosate’
Farmers are battling increasing weed resistance to common broad-spectrum herbicides such as glyphosate, but Australian research could be a game ...
Future fruit: Meet the farmers painstakingly developing colorful and tastier new apple varieties
Imagine reaching up to a tree branch and plucking an apple that’s unusually tall and narrow — a variety called ...
Infographic: Just one mosquito species can spread 54 viruses. Here’s how genetic modification can help us conquer this disease-spreading, destructive powerhouse
Aedes aegypti is one of the most common mosquitoes in the U.S. that can spread disease. One of the best-known ...
Viewpoint: Sweeping advances open door to biotechnology innovation in the UN, US and Africa
At the United Nations on September 21, 2022, President Biden announced $2.9 billion in assistance to address global food insecurity and urged ...
Viewpoint: Regenerative farming and Big Ag — Organic agriculture is no longer just ‘family farms’
According to our “friends” at the EWG, “American consumers spent a total of $20.4 billion on organic fruits and vegetables, ...
Viewpoint: ‘Darwinian beekeeping’ — Bees have adapted for over 100 million years. Maybe saving them from parasites could be as easy as leaving them alone
Bees have been around for about 120 million years... says Brenda Kiessling, a retired physician and an Eastern Apicultural Society ...
Podcast: Industry-funded GMO studies; Food companies back ‘regenerative’ farming; Popcorn-flavored spinach?
Should we be skeptical of GMO safety studies funded by biotech companies? Major food makers including Pepsi and Nestle have ...
Growing rice in the ocean? CRISPR might be utilized to tweak ancient genes could be a future superfood
Around 75 million years ago, a remarkable group of flowering plants known as seagrasses migrated back into the oceans from ...
Viewpoint: Once a biotechnology innovator, Mexico puts its farm economy in a vise, jeopardizes grain trade with the US with GMO and herbicide bans
In power since sweeping to victory in 2018, Mexican center-left president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has relentlessly targeted conventional ...
CRISPR-pedia: Everything you need to know about gene-editing our way to a lower-carbon, more productive farming future
The world population is growing. At the same time, climate change is making it more difficult to grow many important ...
Viewpoint: European Commission must prioritize agricultural biotechnology or ‘the 2050 zero carbon emissions target will remain a mirage’
"Without further investments and simplification of procedures, the zero emissions target will remain a mirage. To achieve this, the European Commission must ...
Viewpoint: Facing unprecedented drought, Europe debates embracing sustainable, climate-flexible, insecticide-reducing genetically modified crops
Europe’s summer of drought has been impossible to ignore. Rivers dried up, exposing the skeletons of warships and ancient buildings. Images captured by ...
EU bans food imports with neonic pesticide residues starting in 2026
The European Commission announced [September 27] that imports of products containing residues of harmful insecticides known as neonicotinoids will be ...
Environmental Protection Agency denies Center for Food Safety petition to ban neonicotinoid pesticides
The Environmental Protection Agency denied a petition September 28 that asked the federal agency to more closely regulate a group ...
China’s Syngenta pushes the edge: Can technology-driven agriculture promote a new view of sustainable farming to a world still wary of biotechnology?
China has very small farms; there hasn’t been a lot of infrastructure put in place in terms of knowledge or ...
Viewpoint: Media hypocrisy — ‘What makes oil companies’ climate change disinformation different from ‘backward progressives’ GMO rejectionist campaigns?’
The media often has difficulty deciding what counts as obvious disinformation or falsehoods. But supposed disinformation about climate change is ...
Case study: What happens if Europe bans glyphosate? Increased tillage, higher greenhouse gas emissions, less biodiversity — and billions in losses for farmers
Following the introduction of glyphosate in 1974, its efficacy against a vast range of weeds and its low price has ...
Viewpoint: Will King Charles abandon his kooky ideas about agriculture and help accelerate Britain’s embrace of sustainable biotechnology tools?
England is in crisis. They lost a beloved figurehead this month but for decades prior were losing scientific ground. If ...
As climate dislocations accelerate, here’s how genetically modified mosquitoes could offer lifeline to controlling dengue, Zika and other mosquito-vectored diseases
With insecticide resistance increasing and climate change priming the environment for longer breeding seasons and a wider geographic range, the ...
Viewpoint: Europe’s energy crisis and Farm-to-fork organic-promoting policy is fueling food insecurity — a ‘glaring oversight’ in EU State of the Union address
EU solidarity with Ukraine was the overwhelming focus of European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union ...
Suffering from devastating pest infestations, Ethiopian cotton farmers resort to using illegally smuggled GMO seeds that have controlled the same problem in Brazil
Cotton growers in Ethiopia resort to unauthorized GMO cotton illegally smuggled from Sudan. Bt-RR cotton seed is currently being cultivated ...
Nestle, General Mills, PepsiCo and other food companies have pledged support for regenerative agriculture. Is this a greenwashing campaign?
According to a new report by the non-profit Forum for the Future, the regenerative agriculture movement in the U.S. has ...
Viewpoint: ‘He overlooks complexity’ — Will King Charles promote his cult organic farming views and reject agricultural biotechnology?
King Charles didn’t discover his penchant for sustainability all by himself. After Charles met the Indian anti-globalization activist and environmental ...
Viewpoint: Ideologically-based beliefs are preventing New Zealand consumers from experiencing the benefits that gene editing in agriculture can bring
It is over two decades since the Royal Commission on genetic modification (GM) responded to the task of evaluating the ...
Climate panel predicts massive dislocations in agriculture and billions of dollars wasted unless drastic mitigation measures taken
According to a landmark report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IIPC), approximately nine years remain to limit ...
