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.
Sorghum resistant to herbicide, drought, pests in advanced development
For the past several years sorghum research has lagged behind that of corn and soybeans, but that could soon change ...
Cuban officials embrace GMOs to feed hungry population, but groups push back
[Editor's note: Rev. Ben Johnson is Senior Editor at the Acton Institute.] Cuban officials have announced the island is turning to ...
Nigerian professor: Anti-GMO campaigners ‘play politics’ with food security and poverty, delaying sustainable farming
Prof. Benjamin Ubi, [president of the Biotechnology Society of Nigeria] says the adoption of biotechnology will facilitate sustainable agricultural production ...
Boulder County, Colorado to phase out GMO crops and neonicotinoid insecticides
Boulder County commissioners voted 2-1 on Thursday [April 13, 2017] to approve the latest version of their plan for phasing ...
Does the administration’s block of the chlorpyrifos pesticide ban signal a changing regulatory landscape?
One of the first things this administration did was to rescind a government proposal to ban a pesticide used on ...
Green meal: GMO foods, synthetic milk, lab-grown meat on the menu
Feeding the 10 billion will require some creative solutions – and unpalatable compromises. Perhaps we can learn to love algae, ...
Neonicotinoid fiasco: How American NGOs turn Europe against science, push EU towards insecticide ban
The current EU ban on neonics has been disastrously counterproductive, resulting in an increased use of more damaging pesticides, mainly ...
How CRISPR gene editing will ‘supercharge’ agriculture
[J]ust as corn helped create these civilizations, these civilizations helped create corn through meticulous selective breeding. Today’s grain hardly resembles ...
Activist-fueled ‘over-regulation’ of GMO research stymies potential to feed the world
[Editor's note: Dr. Amjad M. Husaini is a professor of biotechnology at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in India.] ...
Oregon bill to allow local governments to regulate GMO crops fails again
Local governments in Oregon will continue to be prohibited from regulating genetically engineered crops. Bills to ease the ban both ...
Trump’s deregulation push could undermine trust in safety of our food system
Pro-agriculture conservatives seem to be welcoming Trump’s push for deregulation because they felt Obama-era policies on GMOs and school lunch ...
Africa’s biotechnogy sector crippled by lack of electricity
Money is power, the saying goes. Sure enough, the fraction of GDP invested into science and technology (S&T) is a ...
Urban ‘treatment-free’ beekeeping leads to explosion in killer Varroa mites
[Editor's note: Toni Burnham runs one of 10 hives at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC.] In this season of vitriol ...
Rotten tomato: Senator Rand Paul misses mark targeting tastier tomatoes as wasteful research
[Editor’s note: Kevin Folta is a molecular biologist and chair of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida.] Senator [Rand] ...
GMO corn that resists cancer-causing aflatoxin showcases biotech’s life-saving potential
The creation of GM corn that neutralizes a cancer-causing toxin is a game-changer for human health. The method could be ...
How Cargill flubbed its non-GMO labeling partnership, angering farmers and consumers
As soon as Cargill announced that an outside group had certified more than a dozen of its ingredients as non-GMO, ...
Will organic community embrace gene editing if it restores ancient crops?
Precision genetic engineering techniques could bring back beneficial genes from wild relatives of crops without using foreign genes. The concept ...
Biotech and non-GMO crops may need less separation than believed to prevent ‘contamination’
“Trying to figure out how far GM pollen will travel is really difficult,” says study co-author Rebecca Tyson, associate professor ...
Conventional (GMOs) vs organic farming: Which is better for animals and the environment?
[Editor's note: Iida Ruishalme is a writer and a science communicator from Sweden who holds a M.Sc. in Biology.] I ...
A crucial climate mystery is just under our feet
[F]armers could turn their fields into giant greenhouse gas sponges, potentially offsetting as much as 15 percent of global fossil ...
Has Big Ag funding corrupted Canadian chemical and pesticide safety research?
A Fellow of the Academy of Toxicological Sciences, [Len] Ritter is one of Canada’s leading experts on the effects of ...
Tree vaccine: ‘Weaponized’ GM virus could save Florida citrus industry from greening disease
Florida’s citrus growers are running out of time. Since 2005, when a deadly disease called citrus greening first showed up ...
Hobbyist beekeeping practices and rejection of chemical treatments major driver of bee-killing Varroa mites and disease
Hobby beekeeping is very common. A European Bee Health Report found that in many countries, the majority of beekeepers pursue the activity ...
Hawaii documentary claims presence of Big Ag GMO test facilities forces islands to import food
Did you know that the state of Hawaii imports between 80 and 90 percent of its food? This is, among ...
Tomatoes resistant to fungus and blight developed by 94-year-old West Virginia scientist
Mannon Gallegly, West Virginia University professor emeritus of plant pathology, has made it his mission to develop a disease-free tomato ...
Autonomous robot cornfield scanner reveals how individual crops respond to climate change
Allow me to introduce you to Vinobot, the little rover on a mission to make sure crops weather global warming ...
Should Trump scrap USDA’s National Organic Program?
Federal subsidizing of organics has health as well as economic consequences. Many consumers now believe that organic food is healthier, ...
