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.
Roundup on trial: Second glyphosate-cancer lawsuit heads to federal court
Bayer AG is set to face a second U.S. jury over allegations that its popular glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes ...
Drought-tolerant corn adoption jumps 20% in four years as US farmers strive to protect crop yields
Droughts have been among the most significant causes of crop yield reductions and losses for centuries....To date, little has been ...
US farmers to plant new biotech soybeans as DowDuPont receives final international regulatory approval
DowDuPont Inc has won the final international regulatory approval needed, from the Philippines, for a global launch of a new ...
Video: Tomorrow’s crops could be grown indoors, without soil or pesticides
As the world's population grows and climate change accelerates, farmers are increasingly turning to biotechnology, engineering and data science to ...
US Rep Earl Blumenauer introduces bill to suspend neonicotinoid insecticide use, citing ‘devastating’ impact on bees
On [February 21], Congressman Earl Blumenauer [of Oregon] introduced legislation he said will help bees by suspending the use of insecticides that ...
‘Unintended consequences’: UK restrictions on neonicotinoid insecticides may have harmed bees
One of Britain’s biggest beekeepers says he must relocate hundreds of hives because cabbage stem flea beetle has destroyed so ...
Grasses that genetically modify themselves could help prevent spread of GMOs in nature
Scientists have discovered that grasses are able to short cut evolution by taking genes from their neighbors. The findings suggest ...
Nigera’s approval of GMO cowpea signals Africa’s willingness to embrace biotech crops
Nigeria is on the path to becoming the first country to cultivate biotech cowpea after the country’s biosafety agency granted ...
Trace amounts of glyphosate in Canadian foods spur more questions about safety of Monsanto’s Roundup
Data obtained and analyzed by the CBC show that more than one third of the [food] samples tested by the ...
Viewpoint: Farmers offer to teach popular organic activist ‘Food Babe’ about GMOs—so she bans them on social media
In the four and a half years I’ve been blogging and doing social media as a career, I have banned ...
Gene-edited disease-resistant animals could reduce poverty in Africa’s most vulnerable communities
A researcher in Edinburgh is leading efforts to develop gene-edited farm animals for poor farmers in Africa. Prof Appolinaire Djikeng ...
‘Most foods are GMOs’ and other popular anti-biotech myths debunked
Despite being heavily researched, genetically modified organisms—commonly called GMOs—have many myths and falsehoods surrounding them. Most of these myths are ...
Lab-grown meat may boost climate change more than cattle farming
Currently proposed types of lab-grown meat cannot provide a cure-all for the detrimental climate impacts of meat production without a ...
Glyphosate meta-analysis appeared to raise legitimate concerns that Monsanto’s Roundup may cause cancer, then Genetic Literacy Project pointed out study’s fatal flaws
In the new study, by a group of scientists from UC Berkeley, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and the University of ...
Federal regulators ask biotech experts if GMO trees should be deployed to save ‘dying’ US forests
Plans are under way to plant swathes of genetically engineered trees across the ailing forests of North America in a bid to save them ...
Following trade negotiations, Argentina moves closer to exporting world’s first GMO wheat
Hoping to export a drought-resistant wheat variety, the world's first GMO wheat, Argentina has devised a road map with other ...
Viewpoint: Anti-GMO Organic Consumers Association helps Russia spread dangerous myths raising fake concerns about vaccines and biotechnology
Russian trolls are meddling wherever and whenever they can to cause societal strife. Radio Free Europe reports that Russian trolls may have ...
How global climate change makes it harder to farm: Higher CO2 levels, warmer temperatures may spur glyphosate resistance in some weeds
Herbicides are the most commonly used means of controlling weeds. Recently, there has been growing concern over the potential impacts ...
‘Eco-friendly’ fungus capsules could help potato farmers fight destructive wireworm pest
An EU-funded INBIOSOIL project has developed a new, eco-friendly method to control wireworm in potatoes that can be used in ...
Despite controversial new study, there’s still no evidence Monsanto’s Roundup causes cancer, epidemiologist says
News stories have exploded recently.... screaming that glyphosate [the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup] is a cancer-causing evil that causes a 41% increase in people ...
Crop diversity worldwide is growing, but wheat, maize (corn), soy, and rice cover almost 50% of farmland worldwide
Global agriculture is increasingly dominated by just a handful of crops with limited genetic richness, says a group of researchers ...
Will Canada rethink its proposed ban on neonicotinoid pesticides?
Health Canada scientists have been studying water monitoring data, from across the country, and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency may ...
Video: How Bt insect-resistant eggplant helped farmers in Bangladesh beat back an invasive pest
A new study confirms that genetically modified, pest-resistant Bt eggplant (brinjal) has helped smallholder farmers in Bangladesh greatly reduce their ...
The Paltrow effect: When it comes to GMOs, consumers trust ill-educated celebrities more than science. How might farmers respond?
For a world that has largely forsaken religion in favor of science to base its attitudes towards food on nothing ...
Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer boosts cancer risk? New analysis challenges scientific consensus on glyphosate
Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have published a new scientific analysis of glyphosate (PDF), the active ingredient in Monsanto’s ...
Viewpoint: How ‘lazy journalists’ helped anti-pesticide biologist Tyrone Hayes needlessly scare the public
What do you do when....someone asks to see the raw data that your dubious claims are based on? This was ...
Researchers hunt for heat-tolerant rice, wheat varieties as global temperatures rise
A group of Arkansas State University educators and students are studying effects of heat on rice crops in a three-university ...
