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?
Below is the complete archive of related articles sorted by date.
What is ‘carbon farming’ and could it provide a path to a more sustainable agricultural future?
As the effects of climate change intensify and paths for limiting global warming narrow, politicians, media and environmental advocates have rallied behind ...
‘Over a million seeds are safely locked away here’: Remote Norwegian island keeps Earth’s plant diversity safe in case of disaster
“Over a million seeds are safely locked away here,” Ola Westengen says. He is a researcher and former head of ...
White and brown bears: Are hybrid ‘pizzly bears’ better suited for our rapidly warming world?
Could beige-coloured hybrid bears bread from polar bears and brown bears potentially evolve into a superior type of bear? ...
Organic production in France slides as focus shifts to climate change and organic yield lag
The 21st Agence Bio barometer sheds new light on the causes of France's disenchantment with organic products ...
Methane is 28 times more powerful than CO2, and it’s increasing in the atmosphere. Here’s why and what must be done
The greenhouse gas methane is 28 times more powerful than CO2, and its presence is increasing in the atmosphere ...
Bacteria that cleans sewage? Microbes have evolved to break down medications that we excrete
Many wastewater treatment plants mix wastewater and air in a tank to form an activated sludge, which helps bacteria break ...
In 2023, humans generated more energy-related emissions than ever before. Here’s why clean energy hydropower was the culprit
Hydropower is a staple of clean energy and it’s one of the world’s largest sources of renewable electricity ...
Food security challenged Pakistan reevaluating benefits of currently-banned GMO crops
For the last two decades, Pakistan has faced several challenges, such as drought, salinity, temperature, climate change, and an increasing ...
‘This is one of the worst droughts of my lifetime’: Renewed push for insect-resistant GMO corn to ward off insect-invasions
“This is one of the worst droughts I have ever seen in my life. I don’t know what to do,” ...
AI poised to develop new agricultural practices to curtail plant pests and disease
In keeping with the age-old saying: ‘prevention is better than a cure’ more sustainable approaches should await the farmers of ...
Epigenetics opens new pathway to producing climate-resilient crops
Genetic manipulations such as RNAi silencing and CRISPR are helping researchers and plant breeders enhance traits and characteristics ...
When a farmer and a dietitian are the same person: Telling stories to counter misinformation about biotechnology
Jennie Schmidt, Third-Generation Maryland Farmer, Registered Dietitian, Member of the Global Farmer Network | March 1, 2024 Highlights: Combining a ...
Perfume made from recycled carbon? New technology can transform CO2 from steel mill emissions into sustainable fragrances
Sustainability of fragrances, alcohol, the main constituent of most juices; can now be obtained using more environmental practices ...
Viewpoint: UK’s organic farming lobby needs to drop its ideological rejection of gene editing if it hopes to remain viable
In July last year, the European Commission published its proposals for regulating plants developed using new genomic techniques (NGTs) such ...
Supermarkets vs farmer’s markets: Which is more climate friendly?
Urban farmers markets epitomize an environmentally-conscious lifestyle—home-grown vegetables, paper bags, the occasional beetle in your organic raspberries. Surely nothing could be ...
Combining cutting-edge and low-tech innovation: Tanzania leverages AI to speed up development of climate-proof bean varieties
[At Tanzania Agriculture Research Institute,] TARI partner the Alliance of Bioversity International and [International Center for Tropical Agriculture] CIAT’s trial ...
With climate change disruptions of farming and food escalating, scientists look to resilient ancient plant varieties as a possible safety net
In late September, an international team of researchers fanned out across a remote New Mexico mountain range, in search of ...
Genetic diversity squeeze: Camembert is on the verge of extinction. Here’s what can be done to rescue ‘endangered cheeses’
Each hunk of Camembert or smear of brie is an ecosystem, an assortment of fungi and bacteria that turn milk ...
Is tilapia a human-made freak that we should avoid — or an evolutionary rockstar?
Posts were appearing on my Facebook feed warning against the dangers of eating tilapia. So I decided to do a ...
Viewpoint: ‘Science is evolving, and times have changed’ — Foodie France slowly opening doors to ecology-promoting gene-edited crops
Science is evolving, and times have changed. “Life is constantly mutating. Every year there are 240 million mutations in a ...
Climate-smart agriculture: Here are the barriers keeping South Asian farmers from adopting next generation farming techniques
A researcher originally from Bangladesh has been looking at farms in South Asia to determine why agricultural practices aimed at ...
Viewpoint: What is sustainability? What are pesticides? The way media and politicians define ideologically diffuse words shape policy – often for the worse
Reality is perceived by the definitions we give; the black and white lines we draw upon a grey canvas. So ...
Viewpoint: Are we in the midst of a ‘beepocalypse’ or besieged by ‘false bee alarmism”?
“Bee populations in the United States are declining at a rapid, unprecedented rate,” Ohio State University first reported in 2020. Phys.org added last ...
Viewpoint: Righteous Risks — Here’s how (and why) environmental advocacy groups misrepresent the risks from innovations but cynically ignore genuine dangers
Synthetic pesticides are under constant regulatory pressure, but not organic pesticides. “Green” renewables and EVs have very little regulatory scrutiny ...
Urban farming sounds great in theory — but releases more CO2 than conventional agriculture. Here’s what needs to change
A new study in Nature Cities compared carbon emissions from small farms and gardens in major cities across the U.S. and Europe with ...
Only 9% of plastic waste is recycled. Here’s how plastic-eating mealworms can munch on shopping bags, yogurt cups, and packing peanuts
Plastic-eating enzymes in the guts of mealworms are one of the ideas being studied, but it dodges the real solution: ...
Boost to regenerative agriculture: Nanotechnology-enhanced bacterial fertilizer might could reduce farmers’ synthetic chemical dependency
Claims we may only have 60 harvests left appear to be hyperbole but the fact remains that our agricultural land ...