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.
Growing rice on Mars? Gene-edited rice might be able to grow in the Red Planet’s soil
Martian dirt may have all the necessary nutrients for growing rice, one of humankind’s most important foods, planetary scientist Abhilash ...
Here’s how natural biologicals can produce environmentally-friendly fertilizers and pesticides
There are few problems larger than the climate crisis. But one potential solution is so small it cannot be seen ...
Green pesticides are plagued by fast-developing insect resistance. Here’s how that can be addressed
For more than 70 years, agriculture’s response to pesticide resistance has been to seek new pesticides in an endless race ...
Viewpoint: How genetically-enhanced crops can help chronically food-insecure Africa achieve self-sufficiency
With Africa currently struggling to meet its annual food needs, using genetically engineered (GE) or modified seeds should be an ...
Genetic engineering is not as trivial and straightforward as activists against GM crops try to portray it
Genetic engineering refers to the intentional and direct manipulation of DNA to enhance or modify an organism’s characteristics, for example, ...
Facing food security disruptions from climate change, Indonesia greenlights GM drought-tolerant rice
The Indonesian government has approved a variety of GMO wheat for human consumption designed to better resist drought, leading Argentine ...
Viewpoint: ‘10 billion by 2050’ — How gene editing can increase quantity and quality of calories for a world where 800 million go hungry
“When we talk about food insecurity, we know that over 828 million people worldwide are hungry,” says Sarah Evanega, lead ...
How using solar panels in agriculture can increase yields and fight climate change disruptions
Farms have a lot of open land and that has made them ideal for solar power installations. For example, though ...
How genomic-focused farming can reduce climate and population pressures
Many governments and scientists are now turning to agrigenomics to tackle food sustainability and security. Agrigenomics involves the genome sequencing ...
Viewpoint: We need fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides — which improve crop production and keep food prices low
Thousands of Belgian and Dutch farmers are being sacrificed on the altar of climate change. They are losing their livelihoods ...
Viewpoint: ‘Now is not the time to make agriculture more difficult’ — Why Europe’s biotech and pesticide food policies do more harm than good
Centre right MEPs say they want to postpone the law proposal on pesticide reduction in its current form because it ...
Video: NASA data rebuke ‘green wisdom’ on cattle and carbon pollution. With 50+ million heads of cattle, Argentina has net positive carbon balance
Argentina is one of the few countries in the world with a positive carbon balance, according to a study published ...
Viewpoint: ‘Regulation through litigation’ — Activist groups team up with lawyers to sway government regulations
Speaking at the annual meeting of Southern Cotton Growers/Southeastern Cotton Ginners Association Jan. 21 at the Marriott Myrtle Beach Grand ...
Making moths avoid apples? Gene-edited bio-pesticides in development
William Walker of the Agricultural Research Service laboratory in Wapato, Washington, has three projects underway that aim to use genetic ...
Great-tasting heirloom wine grape varieties can survive climate change with CRISPR gene-editing
The winters that climate change is bringing — ones that are milder on average, but still experience drops to extreme cold — ...
Viewpoint: Green activist alarmism is starving drought-stricken Africa
Kenya wants its farmers to grow pest-resistant, drought-tolerant corn, as pests devour much of its corn crop, and Kenya faces its worst drought ...
Cell-based? Lab-grown? Synthetic? Budding cultured meat industry needs global standardized nomenclature
What would you call a food that’s made by cultivating animal cells in a tank? Is it still “steak” or ...
Misinformation on GM crops and improved seeds hurting Kenyan farmers and hungry citizens
Rose Rono has lived and farmed in Limuru, Kiambu County, in Central Kenya for the last 10 years. In a ...
Deforestation can drive outbreaks as dangerous viruses spread from wildlife to people. Here’s how to minimize the threat of spillovers
Researchers have shown that deforestation can drive outbreaks by bringing people closer to wildlife, which can shed dangerous viruses. Scientists ...
Which cotton is more sustainable: Organic or conventionally-grown and genetically modified? No easy answers
Organic cotton is produced without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and with non-genetically modified seeds. The use of fewer synthetic pesticides ...
99.8%: Rebuffing Environmental Working Group’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ pesticide claims, EPA says almost all fruits and vegetables are safe
We often talk about how government data shows over 99.8% of foods sampled are well below Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) safety standards, commonly referred ...
Fearful of bans on genetically modified grains, Canada joins US in requesting formal trade talks with Mexico
Canada asked for formal consultations with Mexico over the Latin American nation’s restrictions on genetically modified agricultural imports under their ...
Letter to the US Department of Agriculture: Look to biotechnology for innovation
To provide input to the federal government as USDA submits its report in March on how to use biotechnology and ...
As record-breaking drought persists, legal battle rages over approving GMO grain in Kenya
The record-breaking drought is forcing Kenya to confront a controversial topic: whether the country should grow genetically modified (GM) crops ...
20 years ago, Zambia ‘shocked the world’ by rejecting free corn to feed its starving population, claiming safety concerns because it was genetically modified. That freeze is thawing.
In 2002, President Levy Mwanawasa shocked the world when he declined to receive GMO maize from the United States of ...
Nearly all soy and corn exporters plant genetically modified seeds. Why, so far, is there a dearth of GM wheat?
Nearly all corn and soybean acres in the world's largest exporting countries are seeded with genetically modified varieties, but that ...
Climate disruptions are eroding the quality of rice. Here is how gene-editing could protect one of the world’s most important staples
A review of gene editing techniques suggests that the CRISPR/Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas) method could be a ...
