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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UN’s ambitious biodiversity plan puts ‘regenerative agriculture’ at the forefront
Eliminating plastic pollution, reducing pesticide use by two-thirds, halving the rate of invasive species introduction and eliminating $500bn (£360bn) of ...
Biodynamic farming advocate makes the case for transforming fashion with regenerative agriculture
Fashion’s detrimental environmental impact should not be news to any of us. However, what is perhaps not so well known ...
Crispy plant-based bacon is the alternative protein ‘holy grail’
[Beyond Meat’s] burgers, meatballs, sausage links and other plant-based meat products are projected to generate more than $500 million in ...
Gene editing poised to spark innovation in herbicide- and disease-resistant sugar cane
Sugarcane is one of the most productive plants on Earth, providing 80 percent of the sugar and 30 percent of ...
Viewpoint: ‘Greens’ around the world declare themselves ‘pro-science’. But on health and sustainability issues, from vaccines to energy to farming, they are anything but
The Greens present themselves as the party of science. In reality, the party traditionally stands for an anti-science course, despite ...
Does the public have an appetite for lab-cultivated meat?
Laboratory grown muscle cells from various animals are quickly becoming a commercial reality; they are already real food, at least ...
Viewpoint: Anti-biotechnology activists harshly criticize Gates Foundation funding of African agricultural initiatives
Africans have long been told that our agriculture is backward and should be abandoned for a 21st-century version of the ...
Turning waste into energy: Could biotechnology tackle a major tradeoff problem of modern agriculture?
For decades now, bioenergy has been posited as a renewable and clean source of energy. Biomass, particularly from forestry, is ...
Viewpoint: Why the federal government should subsidize high risk, early stage research into alternative meats and other proteins
A record-breaking $3.1 billion was invested in alternative proteins — plant-based and cultivated meat — in 2020. However, we and other ...
Lab-grown meat promises to cut water and land use by more than 96%. Why are US regulators dragging their feet in approving this ‘sustainable innovation’?
Future Meat Technologies announced [recently] that it can now produce 1,100 pounds of meat daily from animal cells grown in industrial-scale ...
Pork is central to China’s culture and cuisine. It’s also under dire threat from swine fever. Here’s how lab-grown meat could rescue this iconic food
Pork is big business in China, the only country in the world to have its own dedicated pork reserve. The ...
Viewpoint: Outcomes over ideology — Why biotechnology innovations like pesticides and GM crops are essential tools in advancing regenerative agriculture
We hear a lot about regenerative agriculture these days, but everyone has their own definition of what this term means ...
With droughts escalating, and no current tools of use, scientists and farmers look to CRISPR gene editing
Scientists fear that we're entering a megadrought that could last decades. As agriculture consumes 80 percent of available water nationwide ...
Viewpoint: Here’s why activist environmentalists’ promotion of a ‘binary organic vs conventional/good vs evil dichotomy’ is bad for sustainable agriculture
Due to successful fear-based marketing campaigns, the demand for organic food in many affluent countries is rising far faster than ...
Viewpoint: Hard truths about regenerative agriculture — When marketing hype is embraced as policy
Words like artisan, craft, sustainable, and now regenerative are used to promise something better to the consumer, but at the ...
Food from thin air? Transforming carbon emissions into protein could clean up pollution and reduce land needed to feed billions of people
Around the world, forests are being cut down to grow protein-rich soya to feed to animals. Using solar power to ...
Organic vs. conventional farming: Which has lower environmental impacts?
A Swedish Food Agency report compared environmental impacts of conventional farming against those of organic farming ...
Recycling on steroids: Making new clothes out of spoiled milk
Did you know that 116 million tons of dairy products are wasted globally, with about half lost before even reaching ...
‘Despite the challenges of misinformation, the technology has enjoyed the confidence of farmers, researchers and policymakers’: Bt insect-resistant cotton celebrates 20 years of increased productivity
In the year 2022, Bt cotton will complete two decades of cultivation in India. Despite the challenges of misinformation, the ...
Can next-generation agriculture become a climate change solution — rather than a carbon generator?
Carbon farming includes a variety of agricultural methods aimed at sequestering atmospheric carbon into the soil. These farming practices can ...
Saving our soil: 4 new microbial technologies that keep soil healthy and us fed
Soil microbes are hard to see and understand, yet we know that they have a significant impact on plant health, ...
When it comes to evolution, could humans be more impactful than nature?
The composition of our air and water is different from what it was even a few decades ago. There is ...
Vaccine in development that could protect honeybee populations from pesticide poisoning
The solution is about the size of a grain of pollen, and when ingested by bees, allows the creatures to ...
How genetic engineering will help make fishing more sustainable
After an arduous process that took more than 25 years from time of conception to commercialization, the GMO salmon was ...
Forest of the future: Maine conservationists plant American genetically modified chestnut trees in hopes of reviving near-dead species
Though some are still scattered across the country, the [American] chestnut has been functionally extinct for 70 years. But science ...
CRISPR 3.0: A giant leap forward in the quest for climate-conscious farming
In a study in Nature Plants, Yiping Qi, associate professor of Plant Science at the University of Maryland (UMD), introduces a ...
80% less greenhouse emissions generated: The world’s first cell-based, lab grown meat factory just opened in Israel
Israeli biotech company Future Meat has opened what it claims to be the “world’s first industrial cultured meat facility,” a ...
