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.
‘We’re successful when our steaks are served at a diner in rural Kansas’: Can mushrooms replicate the taste and texture of animal meat?
While plenty of plant-based meat companies claim to replicate the taste of the real thing, industry leaders like Beyond Meat, ...
Can lab grown meat be considered vegan?
Language is fascinating and complicated. Just as terms like “plant-based” and “vegan” are becoming widespread, their definitions seem to be ...
Scorching western drought weakens honeybees, threatening almond and fruit crops
A scorching drought is slashing honey production in North Dakota, the top producing state of the sweet syrup. That means ...
AI ushers in new path towards sustainable, no-till farming: Robot weedkillers
Other than engine sounds, the robots are almost silent and each one can destroy 100,000 weeds an hour, according to ...
Viewpoint: Politics — not science — driving Canadian policy decisions over glyphosate and other agricultural tools
Ahead of a federal election call, three [Canadian] federal ministers called a halt to a process that would likely have ...
Climate warming could increase land available to grow crops — but also boost the spread of plant diseases
The agricultural impact of climate change would be a little more straightforward, if it occurred in a world where crops ...
Bad press and wild claims have unfairly slowed GM crops on the continent, African scientists say
South African scientists are urging governments across the continent to take concrete actions to enhance the acceptability and adoption of ...
Viewpoint: Why terms like ‘regenerative agriculture’ and ‘intensive farming’ are meaningless
Quick: What do all of these terms have in common: Regenerative agriculture. Industrial agriculture. Organic agriculture. Non-GMO agriculture. Intensive agriculture ...
Does paraquat cause Parkinson’s disease? An academic review of reviews says ‘no’
To examine the extent to which a consensus exists in the scientific community regarding the relationship between exposure to paraquat ...
Viewpoint: Investing in agricultural technology is key to addressing climate change
Agricultural research and development may not be as flashy as other climate policy proposals, such as the establishment of a ...
Kenya’s first crop of GMO Bt insect-resistant cotton ready for harvest
After waiting for nearly two decades for the commercialisation of BT cotton, there is finally some light at the end ...
Viewpoint: Anti-GMO groups peddle anti-biotech propaganda in attempt to discredit NY Times’ endorsement of safe and effective crop biotechnology
For years, the New York Times attacked crop biotechnology on the grounds that it was a corporate ploy hatched by ...
Transitioning to a meatless, plant-based future is a win for the environment — but means major upheaval for farm and meatpacking workers
A largely plant-based future would be a win for livestock, 99 percent of which is raised in factory farms, and ...
‘Climate beneficial food’: Here’s the skinny on the emerging movement to better align agriculture with sustainable production
From complex labels to opaque sourcing and unclear carbon impact, 6 in 10 consumers say it is hard to know ...
‘Activists are working hard to take the farm animal out of the food equation’: Farmers push back on plant- and lab-grown meat movement
[B]eef is being threatened by activists from many different angles. There has been a growing campaign to take beef (and ...
Viewpoint: World’s ‘well, wealthy and worried’ deny the science behind GMOs. Here’s why their opposition is so dangerous
The Well, the Wealthy, and the Worried are the folks who think they can afford to overlook the incredible benefits ...
Study: Glyphosate residues in food are not only below legal limits, they are ‘well below the amount that can be ingested daily over a lifetime with a reasonable certainty of no harm’
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup® brand nonselective herbicides, and residue testing for food has been conducted as part of ...
How robots are filling in for bees and helping pollinate Japan’s apple orchards
According to the estimate of the Japanese government, the number of bee swarms in Japan has seen a 40% reduction ...
Montreal becomes first Canadian jurisdiction to ban glyphosate
Montreal will be the first municipality in North America to completely ban the sale of more than 100 pesticide products ...
Synthetic foods: They sound unappetizing — but they could revolutionize agriculture
[Just five years ago, Upside Foods] developed a biological process to grow synthetic meat products by taking stem cells from ...
How GMOs can help farmers tackle climate change
Going forward into the future, agricultural scientists using techniques such as gene editing can help make crop and livestock species ...
Can the clean meat revolution address agriculture’s ecological challenges?
For a cutting-edge biotechnology, cellular agriculture is actually a fairly straightforward process. It begins with stem cells, usually harvested from ...
Viewpoint: ‘The debate on glyphosate in Canada is populist, chaotic, political and simply unsettling’
Canadians had until July 20 to comment on the federal government’s proposal to increase the amount of glyphosate herbicide residue ...
Biotechnology research and development is the cutting edge of Africa’s hoped-for sustainable green revolution
What is needed to build a sustainable and resilient food system in African countries? This was one of the questions ...
Academic study: ‘We challenge the widespread appraisal that organic farming is the fundamental alternative to conventional farming for harnessing biodiversity in agricultural landscapes’
Biodiversity continues to decline rapidly, despite decades of repeated national and international policy efforts. Agricultural intensification is a major driver ...
New and emerging technologies — combined with low-tech existing solutions — could pave the way to net-zero emissions agriculture
New and emerging technologies could pave the way to net-zero carbon emissions agriculture in the next two decades, according to ...
The debate over sustainable food systems needs a new ecosystem
Europe needs more sustainable food systems to cope with dramatic changes to our natural environment, economic instability, and rapid societal ...
