A professor at Texas A&M has found a way to use genetic engineering to make cotton seeds edible to humans and livestock. It’s a chance to get more benefit (an important new source of protein) from an existing resource (cotton plants). Unfortunately for all those who stand to benefit (especially the poor and malnurished in countries like India and China that lead the world in cotton production), while it’s possible to create edible cotton seeds using natural mutations, the only way to do it so the plants are heavily attacked by insects requires genetic engineering, so any benefits are a decade or more away.
Posts under ‘Feeding the world’
China’s Approval of Bt Rice Confirmed
Read today’s story from Bloomberg. I’d discussed my own thoughts when it was a story based on anonymous sources last week. From the article: China produces 31 percent of the world’s rice and 20 percent of its corn, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. …[China] uses 7 percent of the world’s arable land to feed [...]
Could we feed ourselves with tomatoes?
Obviously no one is suggesting turning the US into a tomato monoculture, but tomatoes seem like a easy, if not necessarily accurate, proxy for the sort of fresh vegetable passed diets that some people advocate as a solution for the entire nation. If the did the same calculation for lettuce, the numbers would likely be [...]
Food Stamps Usage
Today 1 in 8 Americans and 1 in 4 children is on food stamps. We have some of the most productive agriculture in the world, which translates into some of the lowest food prices. Any change that decreases our productivity is going to have to include some way to protect those who already don’t have [...]
Bt Rice in China
Reuters has a story up, based on anonymous sources, that China has just approved a government developed strain of bt rice*. Bt crops express a protein isolated from Bacillus thuringiensis a bacteria used by organic farmers to control insects. The introduction of bt crops (primarily corn and cotton) has lead to substantial reductions in the [...]
It never rains but it pours (more analysis of The Organic Center report)
Just this morning I was talking about how I’d hope to see more analysis of The Organic Center’s report on genetic engineering’s effect on pesticides. Just a little while ago I was able to point to a discussion of problems with some of the numbers behind the report. Here’s more perspective (this time from Steve [...]
This is Why It’s Important to Know What bt Stands For
We’ve been hearing more about India in the news lately. Along with the decision about whether or not to approve bt eggplants (brinjal), India is also debating a set of new biotechnology intellectual property laws. As I’ve said in the past India currently doesn’t recognize genetic patents, so anybody can breed transgenes into their own [...]
About the herbicide application report that’s floating around
The Organic Center released a report about the effects of two genetically engineered traits, herbicide resistance and bt on pesticide usage in the US. I don’t know if their numbers are accurate or not, but assuming they are, I can try put those numbers in context.
Biotech Wheat
Nature Biotechnology has an article well worth checking out (if you have journal access anyway) about the story of biotech wheat. Read on for two key points from the article.
Dr. Gebisa Ejeta on Investing in Agriculture
Dr. Gebisa Ejeta’s testimony before the US Senate committee on Foreign Relations. A call to renew investment in both agricultural research and the train of agricultural scientists around the world.
Dr. Ejeta won the World Food Prize a couple months ago for his work breeding striga resistant sorghum.