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.
Mistrust in experts? How the ‘unpasteurized milk movement’ ballooned among conservatives
During the 2000s, after decades of highly processed food and skyrocketing obesity rates, consumers began to favour natural, organic food, said ...
Key to creating tastier cultured meats and animal-free dairy? Fungi
With animal-free dairy products and convincing vegetarian meat substitutes already on the market, it’s easy to see how biotechnology can ...
Infographic: 800 million people worldwide are hungry and a third of the population food insecure. These 3 tech innovations could help
It’s 2050. The global population has increased to nearly 10 billion, and while we’re still working to ensure every person ...
A robot you can… eat? Robotic food could ‘reduce electronic waste, deliver drugs, monitor health’
Robotic food could reduce electronic waste, help deliver nutrition and medicines to people and animals in need, monitor health, and even ...
Butter substitute made from CO2? Carbon-capture technology could help us replace unsustainable palm oil
A new type of dietary fat that doesn’t require animals or large areas of land to produce could soon be ...
What’s better for the environment: Organic foods from far away or local conventional foods?
Consumers buy food, whether organic or not, without paying attention to its origin and therefore without knowing the cost to ...
Tomatoes are thirsty crops. Here’s how CRISPR gene-editing could help them thrive with less water
Researchers have figured out how to grow tomatoes that consume less water without compromising the yield, quality, or taste, Phys.org reported ...
Viewpoint: Organic foods more expensive, less sustainable, and no healthier than conventional. So why do some consumers choose them?
Every time you walk into your favorite grocery store, there is a competition happening. Its contestants include all sorts of food and ...
Hoe-wielding robots? Solar-powered ‘robo-weeders’ use AI to combat pesticide-resistant weeds
In a sugar beet field a few miles east of Moorhead Minnesota, small four-wheeled robots are rolling up and down ...
Viewpoint: CRISPR roadblocks? The ethical issues that could slow the global embrace of gene editing in farming
Researchers are exploring how advancements in gene technology can improve everything from food security to public health ...
This desert moss can survive freezing temperatures and intense radiation. Might it be the first plant to grow on Mars?
A future civilization on Mars could be accompanied by one very special and resilient little plant ...
Viewpoint: ‘Regenerative agriculture could be seen as a dangerous distraction from farmers’ core mission: Feeding the world’
Recent years have seen a growing recognition of the need for change in how the world’s food is produced. The ...
Politics of lab grown meat: Democrats open to innovation, Republicans mostly oppose it
Florida officially banned cultivated meat, making it a felony to sell, manufacture, produce or distribute these proteins in the state ...
Republican legislators push bill that would prohibit low-income families from accessing cultivated meat
In the House Representatives, a group of politicians have co-sponsored a bill that would prohibit the US government from investing ...
Protecting crops from unpredictable weather, restoring soil health, and removing carbon from the atmosphere: Three ways seaweed is transforming agriculture
Ascophyllum nodosum is also known as rockweed in many areas of the world. It’s been used for centuries by local ...
‘Forest reset’: When dinosaurs went extinct, rainforests thrived — allowing new vining grapes to evolve
A lack of dinosaurs traipsing around following the K-T mass extinction may have allowed the grape we know and love to spread and thrive. A team ...
Pink Jello or lab grown meat ingredient? Improved 3D scaffold mimics flavor and aroma of grilled beef
Researchers in South Korea say they’ve developed a new way to make lab-grown meat taste like the real deal. It may look like a ...
In face of Florida lab grown meat ban, Upside Foods hosts cultivated meat tasting party
As Florida’s ban on “lab-grown” meat is set to go into effect [soon], one manufacturer hosted a last hurrah — at ...
Not just a fad: The ‘Mediterranean diet’ has been around for over 4,000 years
Even 4,000 years ago, people in the Mediterranean knew what was good for them. A new study found ancient Syrians ate similarly ...
Viewpoint: We need crops that can withstand record-breaking heat waves. But so far, funding has lagged
Southeast Asia grappled with a record-breaking heat wave in April and May that not only claimed hundreds of lives but diminished entire ...
Responding to ‘eco-terrorist’ attack on rice varietal engineered to resist disease, Italian government recommits to science
Eco-terrorists perhaps thought Italy was like other European countries and destroying a CRISPR food test plot would make the government apologize and ...
Organic produce made up 15% of all US fruit and vegetable sales in 2022. Is the organic label really worth the cost?
In 2022, organics accounted for 15 percent of all fruit and vegetable sales in the United States despite being far pricier than conventional ...
Viewpoint: Environmental trade-offs are more important than knee jerk, feel-good chemophobia — Pistachio growers make the case for paraquat
The latest errant shot at farmers is Assembly Bill 1963, authored by Asm. Laura Friedman, D-Burbank, an unnecessary and unscientific ...
Methane-free cows? Editing genes of gut microbes responsible for emissions could be one-time treatment for climate-friendly cattle
From feed supplements to animal breeding to vaccines, multiple approaches are being explored to cut methane emissions from belching ruminants. But if you can edit ...
Viewpoint: Are vitamin supplements necessary, or is a healthy diet good enough?
My chemistry teacher, Father Wheeler in Kansas City, would say that the only thing affected by vitamin supplements was your ...
Organic farms are always free from pesticides? Debunking 17 enduring organic food myths
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic retail sales were estimated to be more than a staggering $52 billion ...
Fighting crop diseases: Replacing crop chemicals by using gene-editing and other new breeding techniques
Modern agriculture has encountered several challenges in achieving constant yield stability especially due to disease outbreaks and lack of long-term ...
