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.
Market for agricultural robots expected to hit $87.9 billion by 2025
A new report by market analysts and consultants Tractica has said that global shipments of robots designed for agricultural use ...
Wall Street Journal: Costly glyphosate-cancer legal battle one of ‘worst crises’ in Bayer’s 155-year history
Stuck in one of the worst crises in its 155-year history, Bayer AG, the German company that invented aspirin and ...
With Burger King plant-based whopper available nationwide, meatless meat ‘here to stay’
Gone are the days when vegan meat was derided as tasteless — a sacrifice vegetarians made in service of a ...
‘Ultra-processed’ food may boost weight gain, first randomized controlled trial shows
People eating ultra-processed foods ate more calories and gained more weight than when they ate a minimally processed diet, according ...
Afraid of GMOs? Thousands of studies, strict regulations show there’s nothing to fear, farmer says
GMOs have been widely misunderstood. People are concerned about their health and the environment (and they should be worried about ...
Viewpoint: How ‘insect Armageddon’ stories erode public trust in science
When I was growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, long before we spent our evenings drawn to the soft glow of ...
Why biotech firms are jumping into the cannabis business
As biotechnology embraces the legal cannabis industry, not a few of its executives are grappling with a dilemma: what will ...
Chickens don’t want to be ‘free range,’ they prefer being indoors, Australian government veterinarians says
Do chickens really like being free-range? It seems like a dumb question. Who wouldn't like a big green paddock full ...
Decoded small hive beetle genome could help control invasive honeybee parasite
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service have deciphered the genome of a serious threat to honeybees ...
What might be Bayer’s defense if one of the glyphosate cancer verdicts end up at the Supreme Court?
Bayer AG plans to argue that a $2 billion jury award and thousands of U.S. lawsuits claiming its glyphosate-based weed ...
USDA launches genomics ‘blueprint’ initiative to enhance sustainable farming as global food demand booms
A new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) blueprint, published [May 16] in Frontiers and Genetics, will serve as a guide for ...
Brexit could free UK farmers to embrace CRISPR-edited crops, help meet global food demand, says UK former food and agricultural secretary
UK farming has been held back by the hostility of the EU to new technology, which is causing European research ...
Viewpoint: Let’s change how we farm and eat to stop ‘climate breakdown’
My spirits have been lifted by Greta Thunberg, the school climate strikers, Extinction Rebellion, and – perhaps most strikingly – ...
Viewpoint: India’s GMO Bt eggplant ban drives farmers to buy black market biotech seeds
Bt brinjal [is] being illegally cultivated in the country—the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources has just confirmed this for ...
GMO chestnut trees could help revitalize New York’s Native American communities
The American chestnut once dominated the eastern forests of the United States. A fungal pathogen, Cryphonectria parasitica, was introduced to ...
Bayer to appeal $2 billion glyphosate-cancer verdict with EPA Roundup assessment excluded from trial
Bayer plans to make the EPA’s safety endorsement of a chemical in Roundup central to its case as the company ...
Cardboard-tasting tomatoes? 5,000 newly identified genes may lead to more flavorful fruit
Almost everyone agrees that most store-bought tomatoes don't have much flavor. Now, scientists from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and ...
DNA sequencing reveals complicated evolution of peanuts, staple crop grown on 64 million acres worldwide
According to the USDA, farmers around the world grow 44.9 million metric tons of peanuts on more than 64 million ...
Breeding better steak: Geneticists aim to streamline development of heat-tolerant cattle
For Raluca Mateescu, the battle against climate change involves an unusual task: breeding a better steak. A researcher at the ...
Viewpoint: $2 billion glyphosate-cancer damages highlight why science is ‘no match’ for a persuasive lawyer
Bayer AG hoped it could rely on science to establish the safety of its Roundup weedkiller. But it has clearly ...
Jury in third glyphosate-cancer trial orders Bayer to pay over $2 billion in damages—eighth-largest ever product-defect claim
Bayer AG was ordered to pay more than $2 billion in damages to a California couple that claimed they got ...
Reduced pesticide use in organic farming boosts manual labor as much as 35%
Gleaming organic products have come to occupy an increasingly large portion of grocery store shelves. Many may think that compared to traditional ...
CRISPR, lab-grown meat boost sustainable farming amid fears of biodiversity loss
A global panel of scientists representing more than 130 nations [recently] released the summary of their Global Assessment Report on ...
Disease-resistant GMO chestnut trees could birth ‘new agroforestry industry’
Many Americans know the sad tale of how the American chestnut tree was driven almost to extinction in the 20th ...
Lab-grown burgers are coming, but heated political battle will determine future of cell-cultured meat
Companies in the United States and abroad are moving quickly to bring to market hamburgers and other meat, poultry and ...
Chemical-free gene silencing poised to ‘naturally’ target disease pests that cause $130 billion of annual crop damage
An estimated $130 billion worth of crops are lost every year to diseases caused by nematodes. Targeting the harmful nematodes ...
‘Pan genome’ of world’s wheat could supply genetic variation to breed new crop varieties
The growing demand for wheat, the onset of global warming, and the transitioning of Western farming away from intensive agriculture, ...
