Sustainability/Climate Change
Food production needs are expected to roughly double over the next 35 years as the world population grows and people in under developed countries become more affluent and demand more calories. Healthy ecosystems are vital to the survival of all organisms. How can we grow crops without harming the environment? How can we balance technology and global food security? What is the right balance of organic and conventional farming? What role can genetics and biotechnology play without compromising the needs of tomorrow?
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Viewpoint: The EPA’s current regulatory regime restricts farmers’ ability to fight pests and climate change
Plant pests and disease have a massive global impact, causing the loss of 20–40% of crop production and costing over USD 220 ...
Case study: Norwegians are not about to cut meat consumption to reduce the impact of climate change
Norwegians are not going to cut their meat consumption enough even if they believe the climate impact is important, says ...
Viewpoint: Uncomfortable truth — ‘Organic farming takes too much land to have any chance to feed the world in a climate-changed environment’
Science for Sustainable Agriculture (SSA) was recently asked by the farming media to comment on a policy paper issued by the ...
Viewpoint: America now has a record number of honeybees. How did we get from ‘beepocalypse’ to bee abundance?
You can relax, everyone: The honeybees are back. As Andrew Van Dorn of the Washington Post reported recently, America suddenly now has ...
Counterintuitive agricultural science: Organic farming can lead to increased use of pesticides in neighboring conventional fields
New research adds to the increasingly nuanced picture of organic farming and how well it can meet both our food and ecological ...
Climate instability concerns across Europe put pressure on farmers, spurs calls for reform of crop gene editing regulations
Leveraging the proposed European Green Deal (EGD) announced in December 2019, the EU aims to become the first climate-neutral continent ...
Mascara and eyeliner are mostly made from crude oil or mined minerals. This algae-based alternative could reduce the carbon impact of many cosmetics
Black pigment solutions are often derived from petroleum-based sources like crude oil, natural gas or coal. Each year, 8.1 million ...
Cows of the future: Bill Gates predicts that genetically modifying beef cows, with the help of AI, could help fight climate change
In a recent episode of his podcast “Unconfuse Me With Bill Gates,” the Microsoft founder offered the prediction that AI ...
Talking trees? Do they quietly communicate through an underground fungi network? Here are the facts
A popular theory about how trees cooperate has enchanted the public and raised the profile of forest conservation. But some ...
Viewpoint: Sri Lanka’s ‘tragic’ legacy — To encourage sustainable farming, countries cannot ignore food production and socioeconomic trade-offs
Sri Lanka is a particularly dramatic case showing how rash and poorly designed policies can lead to tragic consequences. In ...
Viewpoint: Debunking organic food myths again… and again
Over and over, the term ‘organic’ is used as an umbrella for a variety of qualitative features in food. There ...
Harnessing power of fungi could play key role in sucking CO2 from the atmosphere
Fungi is being put to use in a range of planet-friendly functions, from being developed as a non-polluting flame retardant to being ...
With Earth Day happening around the world, let’s focus on 10 of the biggest challenges to our global agricultural and food system
As we celebrate Earth Day, the importance of transforming our food system is higher than ever – here are 10 ...
Brewing resistance: Studying coffee’s genetic lineage provides clues on how to create varieties to survive climate change
A research paper released April 15 in Nature Genetics mapped the genome and considered the possible origins of the world's ...
GLP Podcast: Organic food industry marketing fraud; 200 dangerous chemicals in drinking water?
Are organic foods really pesticide-free? Nope. Organic industry marketing misinformation is everywhere. An anonymous French whistleblower claims to have found ...
Viewpoint: Will India embrace a second green revolution — one focused on sustainable agriculture instead of yield?
Methane is a dangerous heat-trapping gas responsible for 47 per cent of India’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The agricultural sector ...
Climate change agriculture: GM crops, no-till farming and judicious use of glyphosate and other herbicides help address disruptions, Canadian study finds
Ever since the first commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops in the mid-1990s, researchers have considered the impact of these ...
Viewpoint: Why Greek organic-certified produce isn’t necessarily better or healthier than conventional food
Organic farming certainly has a lot to offer to humans and the environment, but that doesn’t mean it’s always better ...
How microplastics impact our food and our health
Small pieces of plastic, now termed microplastics have infiltrated all ecosystems, posing a severe threat to wildlife…and now us. New research has ...
Viewpoint: Regenerative agriculture has many different definitions. Here are 5 main principles — and whether they stand up to scrutiny
What is regenerative agriculture? Why is it different from sustainable agriculture? And how do I reconcile what practitioners of this system ...
Viewpoint: At a time where drought and global instability threaten global food security, gene editing offers solutions to combat pests, pathogens and poor weather
Later this year gene-edited crops will be planted at about two dozen commercial farms across England for the first time ...
Debating sustainable agriculture: Weed management and crop biotechnology
Any discussion of crop chemicals must consider the broad sweep of agricultural history, the pivotal moments of technological innovation, and ...
Viewpoint: The keys to sustainable fishing lay in gene-editing and plant-based fish food
As worldwide consumption of fish increases and ocean fish are getting scarce, raising fish under the controlled conditions of aquaculture ...
Bumblebees threatened by pesticides? Independent German university study finds wild bees ‘relatively resistant’ to even potent chemical cocktails
Bumblebees appear to be quite resistant to common pesticides. This is shown by a new study, the results of which ...
CRISPR gene-editing technology heralds first generation of climate change resistant crops
CRISPR gene editing technology is beginning to deliver on a promise to quickly create crops with traits that withstand a ...
Viewpoint: The organic food industry is a $180 billion marketing fraud
As a biomedical scientist, it has never failed to annoy me that the term ‘organic’ has been co-opted to spread ...
Ghana approves 14 new genetically engineered seeds, including pest resistant and nutrition-enhanced varieties
As a farmer, I was recently excited to read a report that disclosed Ghana’s National Biosafety Authority (NBA) has approved ...
