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.
Viewpoint: Can organic farming overcome its sizable yield lag and address climate change challenges?
Organic farming isn’t more climate-friendly than conventional agriculture when looking strictly at emissions. In a comparative analysis of the environmental impacts of ...
The Fate of Food review: How technology will shape food of the future
To take a look at what the future of food might look like, we talked to experts to come up ...
‘GMO debate controlled by non-scientific groups to the detriment of global hunger’, writes Harvard economist
Activists who mistakenly believe that GMOs are dangerous to consume have teamed up with pesticide and insecticide sellers to restrict ...
Battling climate change with carbon-sucking poplar trees
Is old-fashioned photosynthesis up to the task of managing the enormous amount of carbon (roughly 36 billion tons per year) ...
Precision fermentation: New genetic modification process could make anything from fossil-free biofuels to animal-free milk and cow-free cheese
Known as precision fermentation, the process is a hot topic because it can be used to make anything from fossil-free ...
How gene editing can tailor crops to consumer preferences
Is there anything better than a perfectly sweet summer strawberry? Alas, many commercial berries look better than they taste. But ...
Fertilizer-reducing genetically modified barley trials greenlit in the UK
Defra has approved field trials of genetically modified barley that scientists say could reduce the need for synthetic fertilisers. The ...
Insect-resistant GMO cowpea trials wow Nigerian farmers with jumping yields and lower costs — but other farmers remain hesitant
Last August, the farmers were given cowpea seeds genetically modified (GM) to resist the destructive pod-borer insect pest and improve ...
Renewable bioplastics offer sustainable alternative to petroleum-based products
Most plastics today come from petroleum. About three-quarters of every barrel of oil goes to make gasoline, diesel and jet ...
‘Gene edited crops are necessary to sustainably feed the world’ — German agroecology and organic advocate challenges his own community
Urs Niggli, long-time director of the Research Institute for Organic Farming FibL and now President of the Institute for Agroecology, ...
Vitamin-A enhanced Golden Rice seeds distributed for planting for the first time in the Philippines
Finally, a rice that is infused with vitamin A will soon be served on the tables of Filipino households. After ...
‘From 12 chemical applications to 2’: Ghanian scientists urge final approval of breakthrough pesticide-reducing GMO cowpea
More than 100 science activists have in a letter to the National Biosafety Authority, urged it to approve Ghana’s first ...
Podcast: A decade after CRISPR’s discovery, medicine and farming are undergoing dramatic revolutions
In 2012, the discovery of the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 revolutionised scientists’ ability to modify DNA. Ten years on, host Alok ...
‘Almost all crops today have been changed from their original form’: National Academies of Sciences says GMOs just most recent form of food genetic modification
People have been changing plants for thousands of years. Humans started farming more than 10,000 years. Agriculture began in Mesopotamia, ...
Plant microbiome: Key to weaning agriculture off chemical inputs?
All plants interact with bacteria and fungi in the soil. Some plants are especially good at it. Understanding what drives ...
Viewpoint: Environmental Working Group’s scaremongering Dirty Dozen list of ‘pesticide coated’ fruits and veggies loses influence
The Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen shoppers guides to avoiding pesticide residue used to be a huge splash in ...
With animal feed and food prices soaring across Africa, Kenya relaxes GMO import ban
The persistent high cost of animal feeds and supply chain difficulties will continue to make eggs and milk expensive, manufacturers have said ...
‘Honeybees are not endangered and are doing just fine’: Xerces Society says it’s time to end public confusion, refocus on native species
When Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurred around 2006 and entire colonies of honeybees died, experts and the public alike were justifiably alarmed ...
Columbia University finally — but quietly — expunges connections to Trump-endorsed Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Oz, known for ‘quack’ science views and anti-GMO disinformation
After years of criticism, Columbia University Medical Center has finally—quietly—cut public ties with celebrity doctor turned Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz ...
How plant breeding innovations are helping feed a hungry world
As of 2019, nearly 26% of the globe’s population “experienced hunger or did not have regular” access to safe and ...
Growing cell-based meat in space? If humans travel intergallactic distances or colonize planets, this is how we might feed ourselves
Growing meat from cells - particularly at scale - even on Earth isn't easy. Aleph Farms is one of several ...
Pilot GM mosquito tests to control disease in the Florida Keys worked, Oxitec says. Here’s how they did it
Researchers have completed the first open-air study of genetically engineered mosquitoes in the United States. The results, according to the ...
Viewpoint: US farmer organizations offer blueprint to address climate change
As farmers, we’re committed to preserving the natural environment. It’s the foundation — literally and figuratively — of our success ...
Farms that use non-GMO feed generate more greenhouse gasses, study shows
New research shows that if more U.S. food companies require feed for the livestock and poultry that they source their ...
Viewpoint: Is cell-based meat oversold as a sustainability solution?
A new report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems critiques the growing trend of alternative proteins. By promising a more ...
Russia has long used social media to undermine consensus science behind GMOs, vaccines and other Western-based technologies
Hoaxlines found accounts that had pushed false claims about the 2009 Swine Flu and the vaccine against it had also promoted Russian state media and ...
Ukraine crisis prompts anti-GMO German farmers to consider embracing CRISPR gene edited crops
[Joachim Rukwied, President of the German Farmers' Association:] The yields in organic farming on the same area are roughly a ...
