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.
‘Dicamba fatigue’: State regulators anticipate more off-target damage from Bayer’s controversial herbicide in 2020
Three consecutive years of off-target dicamba injury is taking its toll on the agricultural industry. Leo Reed even has a ...
Newly released GMO cowpea brings Nigeria closer to food security, local biotech experts say
In a statement by the Cowpea Manager of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), Issoufou Kollo Abdourhamane, the approval [for ...
Bayer asks appeals court to toss ‘speculative’ $25 million glyphosate-cancer verdict
Bayer AG on [Dec. 16] said it has asked a U.S. federal appeals court to throw out a $25 million ...
Consumer skepticism of plant-based meat could slow Impossible Foods’ expansion into Asia
If the American fake-meat darlings Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have their way, chef Raymond Xie will soon be able ...
Plagued by citrus greening disease, US citrus production down more than 50% since mid-1990s
The United States remains one of the world’s top citrus-producing nations, trailing only Brazil and China in annual production. However, ...
Reduced tillage increases long-term corn, soybean yields, study shows
Agriculture degrades over 24 million acres of fertile soil every year, raising concerns about meeting the rising global demand for ...
‘Fine-tuned’ wheat varieties could boost Europe’s grain yields up to 90%, study suggests
European wheat harvests could be increased by more than 5 tonnes a hectare according to newly published research into the ...
Nigeria commercializes its first GMO food crop
Nigeria has reached a major food security milestone with the commercial release of insect-resistant cowpea — its first genetically modified ...
Barley leaf rust resistance genes may help plant breeders battle deadly crop disease
An international team led by researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has identified genes that ...
GMOs: fastest adopted crop technology in ‘history of modern agriculture’
Biotech crops are considered as the fastest adopted crop technology in the history of modern agriculture, according to ISAAA Pocket ...
99% of tested food samples ‘well below’ EPA pesticide safety limits, new USDA report shows
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) [Dec. 10] published the 2018 Pesticide Data Program (PDP) Annual ...
Impossible Burger, Beyond Burger earn endorsement from anti-GMO Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity supports Beyond and Impossible burgers and other food innovations urgently needed to accelerate the shift ...
New Zealand mulls loosening strict biotech crop rules as GMO ryegrass shows promise in field trial
While New Zealand has not yet approved the release of genetically modified crops, its agricultural research agency’s principle scientist has ...
Farmers may soon use drones to battle herbicide-resistant weeds
Remote sensing provides an alternative to ground-based manual scouting for weeds in agriculture fields. And, while many advances have been ...
Opportunity to develop disease-resistant crops ‘has never been greater,’ plant pathologists say
Approaches to manipulating disease resistance in plants is expanding exponentially due to advances in our understanding of plant defense mechanisms ...
Austria’s January 2020 glyphosate ban halted on technical grounds
An Austrian ban on the weedkiller glyphosate, a substance that has long been disputed in Europe and beyond, can’t take ...
Viewpoint: Conventional, organic farmers risk alienating consumers by ‘trashing’ each other’s products
I once rescued a car from a mechanic who was pushing much unnecessary “repair” work. The ethical mechanic I took ...
Meet ‘Tom’: The weed-spotting robot that could slash blanket herbicide spraying
A National Trust estate farm has brought in a robot called Tom to map its weeds. The robot’s mapping capability ...
France bans 36 glyphosate weed killers, citing products’ potential to damage DNA
French health and environment agency ANSES said on [Dec. 9] it was banning glyphosate-based weedkillers that represent most of the ...
Fungi ‘junk genes’ could yield new drugs, biopesticides, study shows
Bio-Protection Research Centre scientists and collaborators have made a discovery that potentially opens the door to new medicines and biological ...
Could ‘ultrasonic squeals’ from plants help farmers protect water-starved crops?
Although it has been revealed in recent years that plants are capable of seeing, hearing and smelling, they are still ...
Sequenced sugarcane genome aids development of high-yielding GMO crop varieties
An international group of researchers led by scientists from Brazil's Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo ...
Microbe-coated seeds survive salty growing conditions in new study
Researchers at Florida International University have found coating seeds with a fungus and a bacterium could help valuable crops block ...
Manipulating plant microbiome could yield healthier crops, cut chemical use, study shows
A new study by University of California, Berkeley, microbial ecologists used experimental evolution to help identify the core microbiome of ...
EU votes to ban insecticide chlorpyrifos, citing brain damage risk to children
A majority of EU countries voted to ban chlorpyrifos, an insecticide deemed unsafe for human health by the EU’s food ...
Glyphosate-cancer trials postponed while Bayer, plaintiffs negotiate potential $8-$12 billion settlement
Germany’s Bayer has agreed with plaintiffs to postpone its next two U.S. lawsuits over the alleged cancer-causing effects of its ...
Millennials turn to tech to solve African farming challenges
For generations our farmers were told that they will be the next richest people of the world, due to a ...
