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.
Engineering plants to rapidly repair heat damage could preserve crop yields as climate changes
As plants convert sunlight into sugar, their cells are playing with fire. Photosynthesis generates chemical byproducts that can damage the ...
Bugpocalypse? New research challenges widely publicized claims of impending catastrophic insect declines
Drastic declines in insect biomass, abundance, and diversity reported in the literature have raised concerns among scientists and the public ...
Farm groups join lawsuit to support EPA’s glyphosate weedkiller re-approval
Commodity groups, ag retailers and others are seeking to intervene in a lawsuit filed in the 9th Circuit Court of ...
Dicamba on trial: Bayer tells federal judges banning drift-prone herbicide would ’cause chaos’ for farmers
As U.S. soybean and cotton farmers work to get their 2020 crops planted, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ...
Gene editing will revolutionize crop breeding in Africa, new paper predicts
Genome editing technology has the potential to revolutionize crop development on the African continent, especially in sub-Sahara Africa, according to ...
Gene editing could cut food additive use and put more nutritious options in supermarkets
[In 2019], Minneapolis-based Calyxt introduced a soybean oil without trans fats for commercial sale. It was the first gene-edited food ...
Chipotle fined record-setting $25 million for allegedly sickening 1,100 customers with norovirus
Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. will pay a $25 million criminal fine to resolve allegations by federal prosecutors that its food ...
Why we need globalization: Locally grown food could only feed 27% of the world’s population
It is true that in North America and much of Europe you can grow plenty of wheat locally, but in ...
Gene-drive technology may combat notorious Fusarium fungus that decimates global wheat yields
The Fusarium fungus is the bane of every wheat farmer’s existence. Causing wheat scab—also known as head blight—it decimates harvests ...
Capitalizing on corona: Conspiracy theorists blame COVID-19 on glyphosate, GMOs and the ‘New World Order’
With a quarter of the world’s population currently in lockdown, time has never been better for ..... frauds, as they ...
Can vast ocean seaweed farms provide sustainable biofuel?
One day in the future, the Pacific Ocean could be home to kilometers of seaweed farms tended by submarine drones ...
GMO Impossible beef hits 1,000 new grocery stores as plant-based meat demand surges
Starting [April 17], 777 supermarkets in California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Nevada [began] stocking the Impossible Foods plant-based meat substitute ...
COVID: Top 10 current conspiracy theories
As the COVID-19 crisis worsens, the world also faces a global misinformation pandemic. Conspiracy theories that behave like viruses themselves ...
EPA likely to re-approve controversial dicamba weedkillers in 2020, despite widespread crop damage
Herbicide applicators have the weight of dicamba’s future weighing heavily on their shoulders this year. EPA’s conditional registration lasts through ...
Video: 30% bigger crop yields; 60% less pesticide use—The massive impact of GMO Bt insect-resistant eggplant in Bangladesh
Since entering the market in 2014, Bt brinjal [eggplant] has helped smallholder farmers in Bangladesh achieve higher yields, a 60 ...
Buy organic, local and non-GMO? 9 popular practices that aren’t so eco-friendly after all
We all care about the environment, at least a tiny bit. Many of us recycle all we can and own ...
Viewpoint: Government-funded anti-GMO groups promote hunger in world’s poorest nations
Too many US, EU and UN government agencies have been captured by neo-colonialist elements in their leadership and ranks, and ...
PBS documentary profiles Norman Borlaug and his ‘Green Revolution’: It fed billions but critics claim unintended consequences
The Man Who Tried to Feed the World tells the story of Norman Borlaug, an American agronomist who won the ...
Viewpoint: How plant-based meat and other biotech innovations fuel ecological restoration
Agriculture, livestock and fishing are the sectors with the greatest ecological impacts on the planet. Soon, in a generation, they ...
Puff piece: Lab-made ‘Incredible Cotton’ may grow 10 times faster and cut environmental impact of the traditional crop
You might call this a puff piece, because it’s about cotton that’s just as fluffy but more sustainable than the ...
Will genetically improved crops be enough to sustainably feed a booming global population?
A growing, increasingly affluent and urban human population is driving demand for more food grown in more-sustainable ways. ... Sustainable ...
Lawsuit alleging EPA illegally re-approved dicamba could prevent farmers from spraying controversial weedkiller
In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved Monsanto’s dicamba-based herbicide under a conditional two-year registration. The agency determined dicamba, ...
Kenya distributes free GMO Bt insect-resistant cotton seeds to farmers to revive nation’s flagging textile industry
The government has started the distribution of free cotton seeds to farmers, including a genetically modified variety, in the latest ...
Fast carbs: Do the products of modern agriculture short circuit your biology to make you fat and diabetic?
In recent weeks, foods of all kinds have flown off the shelves at grocery stores as Americans stocked up to ...
Gene editing and agroecology compatible? Yes, and they may lead to more eco-friendly farming
New gene techniques and agro-ecology can reinforce each other in making agriculture more sustainable, say researchers at Wageningen University & ...
CRISPR could speed growth and increase disease resistance in farmed fish, boosting aquaculture sustainability
The potential of fish and shellfish production to feed a growing global population could be significantly enhanced through advances in ...
Can we meet global food demand using conventional, intensive agriculture without sacrificing the environment?
The expansion of farmlands to meet the growing food demand of the world’s ever expanding population places a heavy burden ...
