USDA invests $30 million to help boost organic farming and ranching

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) recently announced an investment of over $30 million for 33 grants that support farmers and ranchers who grow and market high-quality organic food, fiber, and other organic products. This investment is part of NIFA’s Organic Agriculture Program. NIFA’s investment in Organic Agriculture Research and […]

Field of Schemes: How GMO alfalfa messed up a perfectly good thing

By Melissa Waddell, Non-GMO Project Most of us don’t think about alfalfa very much. Outside of agricultural communities and diehard fans of Our Gang, it is safe to say alfalfa is not a hot topic. We’d like to challenge that notion. Bear with us: In the US, alfalfa is grown on roughly 23 million acres annually, most […]

Jurassic Park coming to the Arctic? Scientist aims to “de-extinct” wooly mammoth as solution to climate change

In what would seem to be a “Colossal” publicity stunt or a headline from The Onion, a tech entrepreneur and Harvard geneticist have hatched a plan to genetically engineer Asian elephants to resemble long-extinct wooly mammoths as a way to slow global warming. What could possibly go wrong? Entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist George Church, […]

Brazil’s millers oppose GMO wheat imports

Brazil’s flour millers are threatening to stop buying wheat from Argentina if Brazil approves genetically modified wheat imports from its neighbor. According to the Brazilian Wheat Industry Association (Abitrigo), local millers are opposed to processing GMO wheat from Argentina or any other country. Rubens Barbosa, head of Abitrigo, told Reuters: “There is no country in […]

$200M facility in Ohio will farm AquaBounty’s genetically engineered salmon

By 2023, 10,000 metric tons of genetically modified salmon will come to market each year from a land-based Ohio fish farm being built by AquaBounty. The developer of the first GM animal approved for human consumption in the U.S. is investing $200 million in a 479,000-square-foot facility, expanding by eight times the capacity of its […]