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.
Remembering Calestous Juma, defender of agricultural innovation and GMOs
To outsiders, Calestous Juma's rise from humble origins in a remote Kenyan village to an internationally recognized Harvard scholar, science ...
French anti-biotech group destroys research field trial—of non-GMO crops
[Editor's note: The following has been translated from French.] The agricultural cooperative group Auvergne Limagrain ... guaranteed the "absence of ...
Should we create ‘genetically superior’ bee species resistant to varroa mites?
In Australia, the bee industry is trying to find a way to protect Aussie bees from the varroa mite before ...
EPA reverses course, says neonicotinoid insecticides benefit soybeans, other crops
EPA has reversed an Obama-era determination that seeds treated with commonly-used neonicotinoid insecticides bring little benefit to soybean production, a ...
Gates Foundation, EU pledge over $500 million for agricultural research and innovation
The European Union together with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged ... more than €500 million [$589 million] over ...
Can Burkina Faso’s problems with Monsanto’s GMO cotton seeds be fixed?
In the early 2000s, the US agricultural firm Monsanto began tests to introduce genetically engineered cotton seeds with the potential ...
Viewpoint: Consumers fear GMOs because ‘Big Food’ companies bombard them with misinformation
[Editor's note: Omri Ben-Shahar is a law professor at the University of Chicago and the author of the book More ...
Agro-defense: Experts worry US could be caught off-guard by a biological attack on agriculture
The U.S. is woefully unprepared to cope with outbreaks of emerging livestock or crop pathogens and pests, whether those outbreaks ...
5 gene-edited crops slated to hit the market in the near future
Farmers quickly gleaned agronomic benefits from GMO technology. Consumers? Not so much. Gene editing could change that, since it’s keying ...
Harvard prof Calestous Juma—passionate advocate for biotechnology in developing world—dies at age 64
US-based Kenyan scholar Calestous Juma, who was in June named as one of the most reputable people in the world, ...
Senator Elizabeth Warren sounds off on Monsanto-Bayer merger
Back in September 2016, US agribusiness titan Monsanto and German chemical conglomerate Bayer agreed to a $66 billion merger, making way ...
Afraid of public backlash, skittish investors keep promising GMO crops off the market
In the basement of Koshland Hall at the University of California at Berkeley is a trove of seeds with the potential ...
New herbicide-resistant GMO crops renew worries about Monsanto’s seed market dominance
The rapid growth of Monsanto's new GMO seeds resistant to the controversial herbicide dicamba has revived worries about the company's ...
Ginkgo Bioworks: $1 billon company uses genetically engineered microbes to make food, fragrances
Ginkgo Bioworks, the biotech startup that’s genetically engineering microbes to make everything from fragrances to food, is ramping up production ...
High-yield GMO wheat could help Egyptian farmers—but government still hasn’t passed biotech law
Government researchers have made two advances that could increase the national production of wheat in a country that is sometimes ...
Bringing home the bacon: Will consumers eat gene-edited pigs?
Genetic selection through precise breeding programs U.S. pig farmers with assistance from genetic companies have drastically increased the number of ...
How plants learn and use memories for prediction and decision-making
[Editor's note: Laura Ruggles is a philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide in Australia.] The idea that plants can ...
GMO rebound: Record 457 million acres of genetically modified crops grown worldwide
Genetically modified crops were planted on a record 457.4 million acres globally in 2016, up 3 percent from the 444 ...
Could GMO Golden Rice be teamed with vitamin A supplements to tackle global childhood blindness?
I want more than just having Golden Rice — I want it to be widely available to people who eat ...
‘Super beans’: Fast-maturing, high-yield variety could aid refugees in Africa
Drought conditions continue to contribute to famine in Africa, prompting a search for crops that are not only drought-resistant but ...
Open source science: Scientists researching rice plant genetics agree to not file for patents
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), a nonprofit established in the 2014 Farm Bill with bipartisan congressional support, ...
‘Billion-dollar bug’: Genetic resistance to destructive corn rootworm pest identified
Western corn rootworm can destroy cornfields — and profits — but populations of the “billion-dollar bug” have stopped responding to ...
EU delays vote on complete ban of neonicotinoid insecticides until next year
The European Commission has delayed a vote on the banning of three neonicotinoids to include all outdoor crops. Member states ...
California cherry farmers look to ‘gene drive’ technology to kill invasive fruit flies
Since it first appeared in Northern California in 2008, the spotted-wing drosophila, a type of fruit fly native to Asia, ...
Ecomodernist agriculture: Farmers need science and technology to limit environmental footprint
It takes roughly 6 square miles to support one hunting-gathering human. Modern intensive farming, by contrast, can support up to ...
Society of Toxicology: Science has ‘overwhelmingly demonstrated’ GMO crop safety
[Editor's note: The following is part of a Society of Toxicology (SOT) issue statement approved the SOT Council November 2017.] ...
Would you pay more for foods genetically engineered to benefit consumers?
Current consumer research indicates that consumers say they will pay a higher price for food with certain attributes. It has ...
