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.
Breakthrough research into how glyphosate resistance evolves might lead to new weed control strategies
Kansas State University researchers have discovered how weeds develop resistance to the popular herbicide glyphosate, a finding that could have ...
Bayer’s takeover of Monsanto hits US anti-trust snag
Bayer AG’s plan to win antitrust approval for its takeover of Monsanto Co. hasn’t satisfied U.S. officials who are worried ...
Should you pay as much as a 300% premium for organic foods? Avoid EWG’s ‘dirty dozen’?
Have you ever found yourself standing in the supermarket, wondering how to justify forking out $6 per kilo for those ...
GMO citrus, tomatoes and grasses––resistant to disease––next frontier in hopes for consumer embrace of agricultural biotechnology
While the majority of traditional row crop acres are genetically engineered (GE), there are not many specialty crops that incorporate ...
Environmental journalist Mark Lynas’ ‘Seeds of Science’ book details science conversion and past anti-GMO antics
Environmental campaigner [and journalist] Mark Lynas is set to release a new book next month which details his enlightening journey ...
Monsanto glyphosate class action suit dealt another blow as judge says evidence of cancer link ‘pretty sparse’
A lawsuit claiming Monsanto Co.’s popular weed killer Roundup causes cancer was dealt a blow by a judge’s conclusions that ...
Putin pledges to make Russia world’s largest supplier of GMO-free food
The recent boost in Russian agriculture has made food sales abroad much more profitable for the country than exports of ...
Artificial intelligence poised to revolutionize farming
Computer vision specialist Blue River Technology has developed a solution for [pesticide risk], using advanced machine learning algorithms to enable ...
Sustainable AquaBounty GMO salmon, blocked in US, offers way out of ‘deadly spiral of overfishing’
One day in 1992, a technology entrepreneur sat down for a meeting with a pair of biologists who were studying ...
Glyphosate traces found in wine: Should we be concerned?
Scarcely a day goes by without some scary story about glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide. ... Because of ...
Ugandan farmers, scientists hope to bring solution to armyworm invasion blocked by anti-GMO activists
Ugandan scientists are confident that their latest field trials of genetically modified drought-tolerant and insect-resistant maize are yielding promising results, ...
Syngenta agrees to pay $1.5 billion over GMO corn fiasco in ‘largest agricultural suit settlement in US history”
A $1.5 billion settlement was reached in a class-action lawsuit covering tens of thousands of farmers, grain-handling facilities and ethanol ...
European Union court rules activists can challenge EU approval of GMOs
Reviving a challenge to Monsanto’s marketing of food that contains genetically modified organisms, Europe’s highest court ruled [Maarch 14] that ...
‘Regenerative agriculture’: With organic label losing value, this is vying to replace it
“Regenerative agriculture” is a bit of a mouthful compared to “organic,” but there’s a good reason why consumers should familiarize ...
Viewpoint: Indian opponents of GMO mustard promote false hopes about unsustainable organic farming
Geneticist and the former vice-chancellor of Delhi University, Deepak Pental ... and his team have developed the transgenic mustard hybrid, DMH-11, ...
Viewpoint: California judge blocks spraying of citrus-killing Asian psyllid, courting disaster
“Judge Orders California Agriculture Officials to Cease Pesticide Use" ... The judge’s decision is so scary because he just indefinitely ...
Counting on Trump: Approval of biotech animals may rely on circumventing FDA
The lobbying effort to get the FDA out of the way of biotech animals is under way. ... [Recombinetics] is ...
Anti-GMO demonization of conventional agriculture has consequences
The negative rhetoric surrounding GMOs, big ag and non-organic food production is due for a reckoning. At some point, many ...
Bayer’s takeover of Monsanto conditionally approved in China
Bayer’s on [March 13] secured conditional approval from China’s commerce ministry for its planned acquisition of the world No. 1 seed ...
40 years of data show Bt corn significantly reduces pests, spraying and crop damage, including in nearby non-GMO fields
University of Maryland researchers have pulled together forty years of data to quantify the effects of Bt field corn, a ...
South African scientist: GMO crops can improve crop nutrients, boost Africa’s agricultural productivity
[Jennifer Thomson from South Africa’s University of Cape Town] has been a strong advocate of promoting modern biotechnology in Africa for ...
Bad weather, habitat destruction and pesticides are main threats to monarch butterflies
The number of monarch butterflies that overwintered in forests in Mexico fell for a second straight year, experts say. Monday's ...
‘Simplifying science’ for the public key to Africa’s embrace of GMOs, Ghanaian scientist says
A former Deputy Agric Minister has urged scientists to simplify the issue of Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) technology for ordinary ...
How wheat’s wild cousins could help increase its genetic diversity
Durum wheat is the tenth most important food crop in the world. ... Yet yields have reached a plateau in ...
Viewpoint: Congress should reign in IARC cancer agency’s ‘corruption, distortion and fraud’
In November 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology sent the UN’s International Agency for ...
China’s 30-year agricultural miracle: How 21 million Chinese boosted yields and cut fertilizer use
A landmark project to make agriculture more sustainable in China has significantly cut fertilizer use while boosting crop yields on ...
Study of 54,000 farmers finding no glyphosate-cancer link could sink Monsanto lawsuit
More than 300 lawsuits have been filed on behalf of farmers and others who said that Monsanto's popular weed killer, Roundup, gave them ...
