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.
Monarch butterflies avoid pesticide-treated milkweed to limit chemical exposure
Hundreds of recent studies have voiced concern over the negative impacts of non‐target pesticides on pollinator health. However, pesticide loads ...
Meat from algae: The next plant-based contribution to sustainable food production?
Microalgae capture sunlight using pigments of vibrant colors, such as chlorophylls, carotenoids, and phycocyanin. In particular, the algae spirulina and ...
Viewpoint: Federal court banned dicamba weedkiller at worst possible time for farmers
As a farmer whose family has raised soybeans, corn, and pumpkins for the last 50 years, I know first-hand how ...
Insect-resistant cowpea demonstrations across Nigeria aim to build farmer support for GMO crop
The Institute for Agricultural Research, Ahmadu Bello University (IAR/ABU) Zaria and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) have concluded arrangements ...
Socialist EU Parliament member urges regulators to block neonicotinoid pesticide use in France
French Socialist MEP Eric Andrieu says he has written to the European Commission to ask for the suspension of a ...
Engineering rice plant roots increases crop yields in salty soil, study shows
Genetically improving the root system architectures of plants is an effective strategy for developing climate-resilient crops. In this study, we ...
Judge fears Bayer ‘manipulated’ $11 billion glyphosate settlement, opening door to more cancer trials
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said during a hearing [August 27] he’s concerned Bayer has “manipulated” the [$11 billion] settlement ...
FDA launches high-school curriculum to teach students about GMOs, CRISPR
Food agriculture is a topic of great interest to farmers, consumers, scientists, educators, and many people of all ages. After ...
USDA approves gene-edited mustard greens with improved flavor profile
CRISPR-focused produce startup Pairwise got approval in mid-August from the USDA for their gene-edited version of Brassica juncea, more commonly ...
Viewpoint: American agriculture could ‘unravel’ without major sustainability changes
Picture an ideal dinner plate. If you’re like most Americans, it features a hearty portion of meat, from animals fattened ...
Judge may reject FDA AquaBounty GMO salmon approval, citing risk to ‘local ecology’
At a hearing [August 25], U.S. District Judge Vincent Chhabria said he’s concerned that AquaBounty, the biotech company behind the ...
Rainfed GMO insect-resistant Bt cotton in India cuts pesticide use 28 percent, study finds
Scientists from Alagappa University in India conducted a study to analyze the performance of insect resistant Bt cotton in rainfed areas. The results are published ...
Study challenges prior research blaming decline of monarch butterflies on deaths during annual migration
A new study suggests that extensive agricultural use of glyphosate herbicide is to blame for the decades-long decline in North ...
Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat dismiss criticism from rival Lightlife Foods as a PR stunt
In an open letter slammed by Impossible Foods as cynical and disingenuous and dismissed by one commentator as a “PR ...
Lightlife urges Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods to drop ‘hyper-processed ingredients, GMOs’ from plant-based burgers
About a year ago, Lightlife President Dan Curtin challenged his team to make the cleanest plant-based burger they could create, ...
Viewpoint: Cameron Diaz, Katherine Power promote ‘clean wine’ with organic farming myths
In the wake of the natural wine movement and the age of ‘wellness’, it was just a matter of time ...
Video: USDA to decide fate of American chestnut restoration
University researchers are seeking approval to restore the iconic chestnut to American forests by using a genetically engineered (GE) variety ...
Viewpoint: When politics and emotion dictate pesticide safety rules, farmers lose
What happens when science is overwhelmed by politics, rhetoric, emotions, and the vessels now used to perpetuate it — social ...
How tech-driven, ‘eco-rational’ environmentalism can help solve the world’s problems
Few of us are committed to having an evidence-based worldview — it’s truly hard to do. We have to remain ...
Viewpoint: Synthetic pesticides are the solution to East Africa’s famine-causing locust swarms
For months, billions of these pests have migrated from remote deserts into populated regions of East Africa and into Asia, ...
Seafood of the future: Could lab-grown fish replace its wild and farmed relatives?
Do we need animals to make meat? What if we could grow cells outside the body of an animal to ...
Neonicotinoid insecticide ban, drought could cut French sugar beet yields 30-50 percent, USDA finds
France is the largest producer of sugar beets in Europe growing just over 30 percent of EU27+UK's production in ...
Democratic strategists urge Joe Biden to take on Monsanto to win rural support
The Biden campaign wants to undercut President Donald Trump’s sweeping victory across rural America in 2016 by making its case ...
Zinc-fortified crops may fight diabetes, cardiovascular disease in poor countries better than supplements
The double burden of malnutrition is a rapidly growing global health problem. Many populations now face the combination of undernutrition ...
Cuba expects massive crop yield increase with GMO insect-resistant, herbicide-tolerant corn
In the midst of a deep food crisis and a shortage of supplies in the country, the Cuban regime opened ...
GMOs ‘pose no health risks,’ biotech experts say, but ‘bioengineered’ food labels coming anyway
Nearly 70 percent of processed foods at U.S. grocery stores contain at least one genetically engineered ingredient. Even though most scientists believe that genetically ...
Bt cotton in Africa: Role models and lessons learned
Africa’s cotton farmers are struggling to recoup their investments because they lack access to quality seeds that can increase yields ...
