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.
Seed catalogues for dummies: Everything gardeners need to know about hybrids, heirlooms and GMOs
Nurseries, home improvement stores and even grocery stores may have racks of seeds available when it’s time to start gardening, ...
Environmentally friendly farm chemicals? Bio-insecticides edge closer to reality
A 'new generation' of environmentally friendly pesticides is a step closer as researchers make an important breakthrough in pest control ...
Kenyan farmer: We’ve been waiting for too long —government needs to let us grow GMO crops
[Editor's note: Gilbert Arap Bor grows maize, vegetables and dairy cows on a small farm in Kenya. Mr. Bor, a ...
Soybeans resistant to herbicide dicamba will improve weed control but may not meet expectations
A barrier to weed control on soybean farms has been lifted after the [EPA] approved a label allowing use of the ...
India may further cut Monsanto GMO cotton royalty, eventually to zero
Regardless of technology companies like Monsanto crying foul, the Modi government is likely to follow a plan to reduce the ...
Biotech critics in Oregon look to overturn state’s block of local GMO bans
Biotech critics are calling on Oregon lawmakers to overturn a prohibition against local government restrictions on genetically engineered crops because ...
American farm bust: Global competition, low prices, high seed costs push farmers to the edge
Across the heartland, a multiyear slump in prices for corn, wheat and other farm commodities brought on by a glut of ...
Scotland’s first minister: GMO ban will remain post-Brexit
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon extolled the importance of scientific advice in policy-making yet insisted her Government had no plans to ...
To feed a growing, hungry global population, we need more plant breeders
Plant breeders are in short supply as the human population heads to an estimated nine billion in 2050 and they ...
Were ‘activist scientists’ behind European Union neonicotinoids ban?
[Editor's note: Henry Miller is a physician and molecular biologist who was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.] ...
Nigerian biotech expert says GMOs won’t replace conventional seeds, refutes common GMO myths
[Editor's note: The following is an interview with Rose Gidado, Country Coordinator of the Open Forum for Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) in ...
Non-GMO? Organic? Natural? Do food ‘buzzwords’ help consumers make healthy choices?
Picture the cereal aisle (and marvel at the fact that there is an aisle just for cereal). Next, think of ...
Norway mulling approval of gene-edited salmon that can’t reproduce with wild fish
The Norwegian Biotechnology Council is considering whether to approve the method of producing genetically modified type of salmon... The method, ...
Search for targeted pesticides leads scientists to eavesdrop on crosstalk between plants and fungi
In this conversation between plants and fungi, the organisms rely on a well-worn mechanism of gene-expression regulation that has stood ...
Cardboard-tasting tomatoes may soon be thing of the past, as genetic tinkering accelerates
Thank goodness for bawdy academic research budgets. Growers and grocers stopped caring about the insides of the tomato because all ...
UK farmers apply for emergency use of neonicotinoids to protect rapeseed crop
The National Farmers Union (NFU) ... announced [February 7] that it has applied for emergency use of neonicotinoid seed treatments ...
Producing ‘super foods’: Unlocking quinoa genome opens door to new breeding techniques
Scientists have successfully decoded the genome of quinoa, one of the world's most nutritious but underutilised crops. ... [P]rices for ...
Iowa farmer debunks 8 popular myths about GMOs
[Editor's note: Michelle Miller, known on social media as the Farm Babe, raises lamb and beef cattle, and grows almost ...
New GMO book shifts debate from science to fears of ‘corporate control’ of food and farming
The Pew Research Center recently polled Americans on their concerns about genetically modified foods. Predictably, given the popular consternation around ...
High-yield, environmentally-friendly GMO ryegrass moved to US for field trials due to New Zealand’s strict biotech laws
Genetically modified grass that could lower farming's environmental footprint will be taken offshore next year for field testing. Developed by ...
Millennial libertarian: ‘Stakes too high’ for Americans to ignore scientific consensus on GMOs
Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that genetically modified foods are safe for human consumption, Americans are generally distrustful of all ...
Lobbying and big spending on GMO and pesticide issues escalate in Hawaii
The battle over genetically modified crops is turning into one of the most expensive political debates in Hawaii's history. Hawaii News ...
Why do people accept biotech in medicine but not GMO foods?
[Editor's note: this article summarizes a paper (PAY WALL) published in the journal Annual Review of Resource Economics.] In a paper─ The ...
Non-browning Arctic Apple rollout foreshadows more genetically engineered fruits and vegetables
Advances like gene silencing and other gene editing methods, like CRISPR technology, make biotech plant breeding cheaper and more precise than the ...
Ghanaian researcher: Let science, not scare-mongering, guide our country’s GMO policy
[Editor's note: The author is currently a Ph.D. Candidate studying Plant Science at the South Dakota State University, Brookings, USA. He ...
Are pest fighting GMO insects coming to a farm near you, impacting organic farmers?
Genetic modification of insects is used to create a self-limiting population. It’s a technological successor to the Sterile Insect Technique, in ...
GMO ban in Chinese province highlights major difference between public and government on biotech crops
Heilongjiang province, the bread basket of north-east China, has banned the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops – the country’s first ...
