Stronger Plants, Stronger Science, and Stronger Communication
On Monday, October 13, the Norman Borlaug Lecture will be presented at Iowa State by Sir Gordon Conway, with the title: The Global Agricultural Crisis of the 21st Century. This will be my second year in the accompanying poster competition, displaying my work on teosinte and tripsicum. Sir Conway’s bio from the World Food Prize website…
Monsanto has had a few press releases lately that show they are working hard to change both their image and their products. The biggest by far is their three-point commitment to growing yields sustainably. Develop better seeds – Monsanto will double yield in its three core crops of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030, compared…
Read More “Monsanto aims high, while others hit below the belt” »
It’s official. I won’t be able to plant any maize this year. My field seemed to be be ok at first, but now the flooding has spread. We can’t even get to the field because the road is flooded as well. I can’t tell you how happy I am that we waited to plant –…
Farmers have always been subject to ever changing weather, but this year seems especially bad. I wrote last week about the problems local farmers (and researchers) have been facing. The NY Times has an article showing that the weather hasn’t been much friendlier elsewhere. Farms in places as diverse as Australia and the Philippines aren’t…
I usually shy away from pessimism, but if you think food prices are high now, wait until the harvest in 2008. Flooding caused by unrelenting rain has been hard on Iowa’s corn and soy fields – and the summer is just beginning. After all this rain, late summer droughts are predicted (just when the grain…
“Terminator seed” has been back in the news and blogs, due to some rumors that the Convention on Biological Diversity would consider rescinding the ban on the technology. Before I get knee deep into the politics, I’d like to make some quick comments on gene flow. First, pollen of many types of plants are capable…
Kathrin Mendler, a fourth-year agronomy student at Nürtingen-Geislingen University (HfWU), is fighting back. Her university “bowed to pressure from the protest groups and announced that all trials of genetically modified plants would be stopped for the next five years.” She leads a group of students calling for the school to reverse her decision, GMO Safety reports. The story was also reported in NatureNews.
The protesters have destroyed fields almost every year since 1996, when researchers at HfWU first started to study transgenic crops. One of the biggest arguments against genetic engineering is that it is untested. The students at HfWU worry that the only research on genetic engineering will be conducted by big corporations, if they can no longer research at universities. Sadly, the same has been happening in the US. The entire interview with Kathrin can be found below…
Dr. Barney Gordon, soil scientist at Kansas State, isn’t willing to let his work be misrepresented by the media. In a letter to Seed Today, he explained exactly what his work is and isn’t. As I described in my post Exposed, Indeed about the original article Exposed: The Great GM Crops Myth, I’m so fed…
In order to make sound conclusions about different types of genetically engineered crops and to plan for the future, we’ll need to have sound data about any possible environmental effects of said crops. Researchers from a variety of institutions and disciplines* plan to collect that data. Harvesting Data from Genetically Engineered Crops**, published in the…
The NY Times has had some very good articles on the rice shortages. “A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice” has some first hand information about conditions in Australia that are worsening the shortages in Southeast Asia. Asia has its own problems, including floods and food-unfriendly government policies, as I described in “Rising…