It’s no secret that modern humans, with our fuel-burning cars, massive ranching and agriculture practices, and penchant for disposable goods, have had a huge impact on nearly every environment across the globe. But new research shows that even our ancestors in the Bronze Age changed the chemistry of the soils they…
By 2050, the world’s population will top ten billion people. As industrial capitalism evolves across the globe like no time in human history, will our planet’s ecosystem be able to sustain itself during this rapid transformation? Will human beings be able to support themselves with agriculture and survive on this…
So much of our extremely online lives now revolves around things like the president of the United States threatening to either nuke North Korea or show them his genitals (not sure which!) or worrying about massive security breaches. But hey, some of it also rules.
If you were to ask all of your friends what an ideal society looks like, I’m sure you’d receive vastly different answers. Maybe someone will suggest a society without war where everyone works together to solve problems. Your friend who just finished an Ayn Rand book will say something stupid. And maybe your vegan…
The National Chicken Council and some Republican lawmakers want to kill rules that limit how many chicken carcasses poultry plants can process per minute, and they’re hoping President Donald Trump’s disdain for Obama-era red-tape will help them feed America’s growing bird-blood lust.
Last week at the biotech conference SynBioBeta, I swiped one of Okanagan Specialty Fruits’ Arctic Apples and put it in my purse. The Arctic Apple is the first genetically engineered apple, modified so that when it is cut, it doesn’t turn an unappetizing shade of brown. When I got home, I sliced it up and stuck it in…
A new NASA-sponsored study shows that global methane emissions produced by livestock are 11 percent higher than estimates made last decade. Because methane is a particularly nasty greenhouse gas, the new finding means it’s going to be even tougher to combat climate change than we realized.
President Donald Trump managed to sneak a few minutes from his busy schedule of threatening federal investigators to make official his nominee for the United States Department of Agriculture’s top scientific position on Wednesday. Given the tough choice between filling the role with a scientist or someone who is not a…
Diamondback moths may be a mere half-inch in length, but their voracious appetite for Brussels sprouts, kale and cauliflower make them a major pain for farmers. This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved a potential solution: moths genetically engineered to contain a special gene that makes them gradually…
Trump’s 2018 budget proposal is out, and unsurprisingly, the cuts are huge. Some anticipated crazy cuts to the United States Department of Agriculture’s social program. Those cuts still exist, of course—this is President Donald Trump, after all. But what the new budget really shows as far as agriculture goes is that…
There are a few of generalizations we can probably make about meat. First, meat production is bad for the animal. Second, meat production is bad for the environment. Third, meat tastes good.
Back on a crisp January day in 2016, I slipped around on a frozen lake in Wisconsin to ask a bunch of portly men in grey hoodies and trucker hats how the fishing had been compared to when they were kids. Secretly, I wanted to know what they thought about the changing climate. The men had various backgrounds, many of…
Climate change is bad, beef is bad, everything is bad, yadda yadda. But Americans ate less beef between 2005 and 2014, which kept a lot of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, according to a new study. Maybe cutting back on those hamburgers is actually doing something good for the environment.
Chicken farmers in Tennessee are about to shed a lot of blood. After noticing an unusually high death rate in a flock, some Tyson Foods-suppliers discovered that they were dealing with a new bird flu outbreak. Don’t worry too much, though: The USDA says humans should be safe.
Olive oil is clearly worse than butter, but the media’s got bad news for those who have made the wrong choice about which form of grease to cover their bread with. An especially crappy year of bad weather and bacteria have sent every other news outlet panicking after the prices went up, like, a little bit.
The agricultural industry has long been considered an enemy of humanity when it comes to recklessly pumping antibiotics into animals. In further evidence that this practice is fueling a public health crisis, a new study has found a disconcerting trend at Chinese farms: flies are spreading the gene that gives bacteria…
Gene editing research is moving quickly in China—researchers there have already edited human embryos, after all. But a team of scientists now have their sights set on the food supply. Ladies, gentelmen, etc., meet the first crop of tuberculosis resistant, genetically moo-dified cows.
Folks at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service received an email Monday morning from their chief of staff telling them not to talk to the public about their work.
If you wanted to, say, turn a red pepper yellow, you have a few options. You could directly tinker with with the plant’s genetic code, tweaking the genes that control its color. Or, perhaps, you could just mist the plant with a spray that changes its gene expression without altering its genetics.
On January 1, a set of long-awaited FDA rules went into effect that could mark a major shift in the agency’s approach to antibiotics for livestock animals. First, the new policies place an outright ban on the use of any antibiotics considered “medically important” to help animals gain weight. The rules also require…