Daily Food & Ag Digest
Every day, the staff of the Genetic Literacy Project scours the Web for stories on a range of agricultural and food issues, including the GMO debate, conventional and organic farming, regulations, new breeding technologies and sustainability. We publish excerpts of those stories and encourage our readers to visit the original publications for the complete stories.
Ugandan field trials demonstrate significant economic benefits for farmers growing insect-resistant Bt maize
African scientists have demonstrated that genetically modified Bt maize offers much higher yields and better pest resistance than conventional varieties ...
Breeding a tastier bug: Insect farming may not replace crops and livestock, but they have a bright future in the food chain
Christine Picard's search for a better bug to feed the world starts with dead bodies. Well, not the corpses themselves, ...
With war raging in the Ukraine, UK farmers reconsider GM crops to meet growing yield and sustainability demands
[A]s the world grapples with the impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “it has actually become pretty frightening times for ...
Viewpoint: How transparent are global meat and dairy companies in disclosing their impacts on climate change?
Last fall, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) took out a full-page ad in The New York Times declaring that the U.S ...
Viewpoint: How do pesticides impact bees? Influential University of Illinois entomologist Mae Berenbaum calls for approvals to include pre-release real-world monitoring
Whether a pesticide is toxic to bees or not would seem to be a straightforward question, easily resolved in science ...
Oxitec successfully concludes Brazilian field trial of self-limiting fall armyworm developed to protect insect-resistant Bt corn
Oxitec has completed the first farm-scale pilots of Friendly™ fall armyworm on thousands of hectares of commercial corn in Brazil’s ...
Believing shipment was GMO crops, anti-technology organization ‘Extinction Rebellion’ illegally dumps 1,5000 tons of conventional wheat intended to feed poultry in countries hard hit by Ukrainian war
The image is distressing: an entire train stopped in the middle of the track, its ripped sides spilling 1,500 tons of ...
Could the war in Ukraine spark a global food crisis?
A crucial portion of the world’s wheat, corn and barley is trapped in Russia and Ukraine because of the war, while ...
Video: What would a world without herbicides look like? Purdue’s Jayson Lusk addresses how biotechnology can address climate change and reduce food insecurity
Pesticide shortages, increased labor costs, and transportation bottlenecks are raising the cost of food across the EU. With war roiling ...
Genetics research boosts response to disease plaguing Hawaii’s coffee crop
As the only state that produces coffee, including the iconic Kona variety, Hawaii growers and agricultural officials were alarmed when ...
Future farming to feed 10 billion: Moving from chemical to biological era of agriculture
”We cannot feed 10 billion people in a sustainable way using the current production systems. We can’t. We need to ...
Viewpoint: Why we should think twice about reflexively banning agricultural pesticides
Is banning pesticides in the public’s best interest? The answer is an emphatic yes when the science indicates that exposures ...
Viewpoint: Beef farmers, under fire from sustainability critics, make their case
Around the world, the beef industry is the subject of a growing ethical debate. Many people seem to think that ...
How the Russian invasion of Ukraine is stirring global food insecurity
Consumers around the world will feel the “enormous impact” of Russia’s war on Ukraine through sharply higher food prices and ...
Viewpoint: Is cell-based meat science or a billion-dollar con?
Almost a decade since the unveiling of the first lab-grown burger, no business has been able to make it commercially ...
Ukraine conflict spurs food concerns in China, renews push to embrace crop genetic engineering and other yield boosting tools
Food security and self-sufficiency have long been high on the agenda of Chinese policy makers. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gives Beijing ...
Ukraine crisis prompts Europe to rethink Green Deal Farm to Fork policy, move away from organics to achieve sustainability goals
According to the "Green Deal",with which the European Union wants to become climate-neutral by 2050, only half as many pesticides and ...
‘The Insect Crisis’ book review: From climate change to habitat loss to chemicals, what’s behind the die off of insect populations?
When was the last time you had to clean bug splatter from your windshield? This ritual was once an inevitable ...
6 best foods to improve brain functioning? Here’s one Harvard scientist’s list
Based on my work with hundreds of patients, below are the best brain-boosting foods that people aren’t eating enough of ...
Regenerative agriculture: How a Canadian farm repurposes food waste to combat climate change
Jocelyn Molyneux has an army of around a million red wiggler worms at her Caledon, Ont.-based Wastenot farms, diverting the organic ...
Sustainable seafood? This company believes it can make tasty vegan fish from plants and cultivated cells
One-third of the world’s tuna stocks are now fished at unsustainable levels, according to the most recent State of the ...
Japanese journalist explains why he flipped from anti-GMO campaigner to embracing agricultural biotechnology revolution
Masami Kojima, a reporter for the Mainichi Shimbun... initially took a negative position on GM crops, but now he is ...
Winners and losers in plant evolution: How humans are driving hundreds of species to extinction
A new analysis spanning more than 86,000 plant species from John Kress, botany curator emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of ...
Viewpoint: Politicians are making a mess of regulating agricultural pesticides
In January, the New Jersey legislature enacted restrictions on most uses of neonicotinoids. The bill effectively bans about 70 percent of neonic ...
Viewpoint: How can we deliver on agricultural gene editing’s sustainability promise?
The pace of research in the field of genome editing — understanding, modifying and altering gene function — has quickly ...
EPA poised to extend use of four neonicotinoid pesticides, rebuffing environmentalist claims they endanger bees
The US Environmental Protection Agency is poised to allow the use of four of the most devastating chemicals to bees, ...
Increasing yields without genetic modification? A bio-spray that silences plant genes is in the works
The use of bioactive molecules has shown the capability to infiltrate into plant leaves and into the cells themselves with ...
