Newsletter GLP Food & Ag
Viewpoint: Do we need to curtail economic expectations to ensure that we have enough food to feed the planet?
A little over 200 years ago, one of the noted economists and philosophers of the day, Thomas Malthus published an essay ...
30 years of waiting for an insect-resistant tomato but questions about taste may limit its market
A tenacious plant breeder has developed more than a dozen new lines of naturally pest-resistant tomatoes — foreshadowing a future in ...
Europe dragging its feet on CRISPR deregulation assessment. Here’s how the process has been politicized
If the European Union wants to fully utilize the genetic potential of crops, new breeding technologies (NBTs) should be treated ...
GLP podcast and video: Golden Rice hits another roadblock; Glyphosate protects endangered species; Growing medicine in GMO crops
The Philippines recently approved the cultivation of Golden Rice to prevent blindness and death caused by vitamin A deficiency (VAD) ...
Viewpoint: Subverting the science of crop biotechnology — Leaked document from German NGO illustrates ‘scandalous’ strategy by anti-biotech activists to manipulate the public
A leaked internal document from the German anti-biotech NGO community recently found its way to the Risk-Monger’s dusty basement. As ...
Viewpoint: Decarbonizing farming — Comparing regenerative agriculture with ‘sustainable intensification’
An interesting report crossed my desk the other day. Entitled ‘Scaling Regenerative Agriculture: An Action Plan’, it came from the Sustainable Markets ...
Viewpoint: Anti-chemical film polemic “Into the Weeds” is wrong on the facts but a tort lawyer’s dream. Did lawyers and the organic industry fund it?
The organic food industry lobby was in full swing in Brussels with their StopGlyphosateWeek. A collective of NGOs ran an ...
Germany is the major obstacle to the adoption of gene editing and other crop biotechnology innovations in the EU. When might that change?
Since 2000, the EU has adopted a very hostile stance towards GMO crops, and it’s carried over into its opposition ...
Viewpoint: Without glyphosate, critical wetlands and wildlife could be strangled by invasive plants
Almost two years ago, I wrote an article hoping “we are finally at a place when a few influential scientists with ...
Viewpoint: Rollout of agricultural gene editing in England is not yet a sure thing. This is what could derail it.
Last month, the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament and received Royal Assent ...
Anti-biotech activists claim biotech crops promote “unsustainable” monoculture? Let’s separate facts from ideology
Biotech critics frequently claim that conventional agriculture and GMOs promote monoculture farming, which is harmful to biodiversity. A closer look ...
Biopharming can help pioneer new treatments but cumbersome, outdated regulations block innovation
Obtaining medicines from plants is not new. Aspirin was first isolated from the bark of the willow tree in the ...
Podcast and video: Animal mRNA vaccines under fire; Too many antibiotics in agriculture? Does ‘Big Ag’ control the global seed market?
The same technology that yielded COVID-19 vaccines could help protect livestock from deadly diseases, but a growing chorus of skeptics ...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to detect crop diseases are on the way
Swarms of locusts devastating crops in East Africa, corn rootworms wreaking havoc in the Midwestern US. Blights destroying rubber trees in Brazil and ravaging potatoes in South India ...
Viewpoint: GMO crops are key to sustainable farming — why are some scientists afraid to talk about them?
A shallow piece in the journal Science downplaying the importance of GMO crops belongs in a New Age publication ...
Re-examining 10 science-challenged studies suggesting GMOs are harmful
The blog "10 Scientific Studies Proving GMOs Can Be Harmful To Human Health" is now a fixture on cyberspace. A ...
“GMOs”, “contamination” and “coexistence”: Challenging the misuse of concepts and wrongheaded regulation of agriculture and food
The term “genetically modified organisms” (or “GMOs”) has come into wide use over the past two decades although it is ...
Does conventional livestock farming use drugs at ‘unnecessarily high levels’, endangering human health, as activist critics claim?
Livestock farming generates some striking external impacts: while production provides 30% of human dietary protein, it occupies 75% of agricultural ...
GLP podcast and video: ESG undermines sustainable farming? Top-10 anti-biotech propagandists; FDA’s ‘healthy’ food labels
Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG) metrics are supposed to help promote sustainable industry, but could they actually undermine efforts to make farming more ...
Here’s how the GMO purple tomato soon to be in US grocery stores came to fruition
Norfolk Healthy Produce’s purple tomato first appeared in The New York Times Magazine eight months ago. Genetically engineered to naturally produce ...
Agriculture and climate change: Taking the best of all farming systems could tip the carbon scale in the right direction
Agriculture contributes a significant portion of the world's climate-changing greenhouse gases. In turn, changes in climate will reduce agricultural yields ...
Crops that tolerate droughts and climate change? Here’s how cactus genes could help
This past summer, a widespread drought across the United States lowered crop yields by as much as one-third as corn, ...
Why the European Union needs to grow genetically-engineered crops
The United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, and India are among the growing number of countries that have deregulated ...
Viewpoint: Biotechnology rejectionists claim the Green Revolution caused more harm than good. Here are the facts.
After the Second World War, regional famines began to occur. Believing that increasing agricultural performance can be the solution to ...
French Academy of Agriculture scientist challenges government to ‘follow the science’ and revise its regulatory opposition to genetically edited crops
While a debate is in progress at the European level about the genetically edited products, it is time for the ...
GLP podcast: ‘Only 60 harvests left,’ debunked; Beating pesticide resistance; ‘Regulation through litigation’ threatens sustainable farming?
Have we so badly depleted the world's soil that we only have 60 harvests left? No. New "green" pesticides could ...
Lab-grown meat and other alternatives to farming could free up Earth’s farmland for conservation or development
Here’s the basic problem for conservation at a global level: food production, biodiversity and carbon storage in ecosystems are competing for ...