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.
Nigeria is ready to meet strong farmer demand for GMO cowpea seeds
Nigerian farmers should have ample access to insect-resistant genetically modified (GM) cowpea seeds for this summer’s planting season, scientists say ...
Viewpoint: What the war in Ukraine tells us about global limitations of organic farming
The nascent food crisis now reveals a hard truth: organic agriculture cannot feed the world and could even worsen future ...
Viewpoint: ‘Microbes and plants can be altered to increase to carbon capture’ — Biophysicist lays out pathway for net-zero emissions
The same genetic engineering tools used for climate change adaptation are now being used for carbon capture ...
Nigeria moves to import GM wheat to lower local food prices
In a bid to drive down high food prices, Nigeria has launched the process to permit the importation of genetically ...
Viewpoint: Environmental Working Group’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ scaremongering — Consumers reject fear-based environmentalist disinformation
Consumers encounter so many mixed messages on produce, ranging from the Dirty Dozen‘s disinformation to the just-eat-your-veggies slogan. How do we ...
Viewpoint: ‘Optimizing nature’ — How gene editing can help grow crops in unstable climates using less water
As global policy conversations continue to shine the spotlight on sustainability, the scope of these discussions also focusses on agriculture, ...
Video: Erratic weather from climate change is biggest threat facing Kenyan crops. Gene-editing technology could help, farmer says
How do farmers define sustainability on their farms? Find out how Kenyan farmer Felix Kili views the issue, and how ...
Viewpoint: ‘Depression and now anarchy’ — How rejecting agricultural technology and vanity of ‘green’, organic farming led to Sri Lanka’s collapse
The anarchic scenes in Sri Lanka are enough to make the blood of any world leader run cold. President Gotabaya ...
Viewpoint: Solved! Busting pro-organic, anti-GMO myths
Over the years, we have experienced a massive increase in the consumption of organic foods, with many people painting conventional ...
Viewpoint: Will Biden and the ‘progressive left’ muster independence to embrace agricultural gene editing and its carbon-capture potential?
Carbon capture has often been touted as an alternative to dealing with climate change that does not involve laying waste ...
Viewpoint: Organic milk requires expensive feed and labor. Not even huge subsidies can save this supposedly sustainable market from scams and inefficiency
US organic dairy export volumes have consistently fallen since 2017. Since that year, organic fluid milk exports have fallen 76%, ...
Viewpoint: Why Rwanda and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa need to embrace genetically modified crops
According to the recent publication “Plant biotechnology: A key tool to improve crop production in Rwanda” intensive and appealing discussions ...
How genetically engineered crops could super-charge efforts to address climate change
You can create a stable carbon capture system by genetically engineering plants to grow more extensive roots and pump more carbon ...
World Economic Forum: How genetically engineered crops can fight climate change
Food systems account for over one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Any successful strategy for reaching the ambitious — and critical ...
Facing rising pesticide and labor costs, Bangladesh poised to approve sustainable insect-resistant Bt GMO cotton
With Bangladesh likely to approve commercial cultivation of genetically modified Bt cotton varieties sourced from an Indian company soon, seed ...
Climate change-fighting rice? Plants trap carbon dioxide as they grow — and CRISPR gene editing can optimize this process
Can gene-editing technology CRISPR create new crops that help fight climate change as they grow? That’s what a group of ...
Viewpoint: Why Europe’s proposed Green Deal Farm to Fork strategy will be a disaster for Africa
Agricultural programs funded by the EU have in the past mainly focused on the technologies that Europe wanted to promote ...
‘43% lower yields’: Challenging common wisdom, organic farming is ‘less efficient, more expensive, and worse for the environment’
Consumers are misled about the alleged benefits of organic farming. Organic food is thought to be healthier (it isn’t) and ...
CRISPR is already transforming medicine. Next up? Addressing climate change challenges
The advent of CRISPR allowed us to create new molecular tools for potentially skipping the slow aspects of plant tissue ...
Road to sustainable GMO salmon production: AquaBounty’s endless slog through broken US regulatory system
AquaBounty's transgenic salmon is the first GM animal protein approved for human consumption in the United States and Canada ...
Climate Action Farming: What farmers need to do to adapt as our planet heats up—and why organic and ‘regenerative agriculture’ cannot meet the challenge
There are a number of practices that farmers could use to manage their land in ways that would optimally remove ...
Viewpoint: ‘Farmers don’t need nitrogen fertilizers at all’? — Why easy solutions to cut down on chemical fertilizers don’t work
Clover, it turns out, can be used to fix nitrogen and boost yields in pasture forages for dairy cows. Who ...
Viewpoint: GMO technology is ‘no threat’ to indigenous Ethiopian crops. Here’s why
Should we be worried about losing our indigenous crops because of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)? The answer is an outright ...
What role can genetics play in ‘designing’ more sustainable crops, livestock and trees?
Genome engineers have deployed CRISPR tools in species from viruses and bacteria to plants and trees including species used in ...
Video: Honeybee apocalypse? Yet another scientist challenges claims that bees used mostly in agriculture are under threat. Wild bees? That’s another story
German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder challenges what she calls the ‘myth’ that honeybees are facing catastrophic health challenges ...
Viewpoint: ‘Win-win for food security’ — Why Uganda needs both biotechnology and agroecology to feed itself as climate change roils farming
Over the past decade or so, many ordinary farmers especially in developing countries including Uganda, have been thrown into a ...
Farming of the future: Can precision indoor farming create an alternative food system?
A precision indoor farming system [PIFS] comprises numerous interrelated components, from the plants and animals to the enclosing structure(s), growing ...
