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.
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 ...
Gene editing could yield tastier blackberries and raspberries with longer shelf life
Like your berries? [Biotech startup] Pairwise .... is working to put more options on supermarket shelves. It has partnered with ...
Can a novel ‘genetic’ pesticide knock out citrus greening disease before it devastates US orange groves?
[Citrus greening] disease has already decimated citrus groves in the other major citrus-producing states of Florida, California and Texas. According ...
‘Climate-resilient’ wheat may provide sustainable fiber source, promote gut health
Some new crop varieties are bred to be more nutritious. Others are more resilient, bred to tolerate harsher environmental conditions ...
Biotech-powered, plant-based seafood poised to cut overfishing, pollution and ‘food fraud’
Plant-based seafood specialist Kuleana is targeting seafood and sushi lovers with what it describes as the ‘next generation of raw ...
Brexit unlikely to change UK’s restrictive GMO crop rules in the next 3 years, USDA reports
In his inaugural speech as Prime Minister (PM) in July 2019, Boris Johnson said “let’s liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience ...
Cellular agriculture could replace some of the 270 million dairy cows needed to produce milk
Worldwide demand for milk is continually increasing in response to a range of factors, including global population growth and changing ...
5 nations grow 174.5 million hectares of GMO crops annually—more than 90% of global total
High adoption of biotech crops continued in 2018 with 26 countries planting 191.7 million hectares worldwide. This area is an ...
Plant virus that combats fungal pathogens may yield low-cost COVID-19 vaccine
A variety of scientists worldwide are changing their primary research focus these days with the aim to bring solutions for ...
FDA has ‘no objections’ to lab-made dairy proteins produced with GMO microbes
Perfect Day, a startup producing milk proteins via microbial fermentation (minus the cows), has secured a coveted ‘no questions/objections’ letter ...
After three lost glyphosate-cancer trials, Bayer investors fear litigation ‘avalanche’ will further harm company’s reputation
Two influential shareholder advisory groups are split on whether investors should support Bayer AG’s management at its upcoming annual meeting, ...
