by Almuth Ernsting Subsidies intended for next-generation cellulosic ethanol production are to be applied to a trivial improvement to corn ethanol refining technologies. Since cellulosic ethanol qualifies for much higher subsidies, this will significantly increase ...
by Jonathan Latham, PhD The National Academy of Sciences needs to urgently address its one-sided work on GMOs say public-interest groups, farmer organisations, and academics. In a letter sent to the Academy’s president today, dozens ...
by Elizabeth Henderson At one of the public brainstorming sessions for the New York Organic Action Plan, an organic farmer made an impassioned plea for support for “independent science” and told us that with 8.5 billion mouths to feed by 2050, we will need genetic engineering to prevent starvation. I ...
By Almuth Ernsting Biofuels consumed today are usually ethanol made from the sugar in sugar cane (or sugar beet) or they may be made from starch in grains. In the US this is mostly corn starch. Alternatively, biodiesel may be made from plant oils such as soybean or canola oil. ...
by Salvatore Ceccarelli, PhD Five of the global issues most frequently debated today are the decline of biodiversity in general and of agrobiodiversity in particular, climate change, hunger and malnutrition, poverty and water. Seed is central to all five issues. The way in which seed is produced has been arguably ...
By Rachel Smolker, PhD When the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) published their most recent fifth assessment report, something surprising and deeply disturbing was lurking in the small print in chapter three on “mitigation”. The IPCC revealed that to achieve even a recognizably normal future climate the models they ...
(UC STUDENTS’ OPEN LETTER TO THE EXTERNAL ADVISORY BOARD OF THE AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY INSTITUTE (ASI) & SAREP) As the students of the University of California, we come to you today to share our often silenced voices, our vision, and concerns we have about our common future. Our intention here is ...
By Tracy Frisch As in other parts of North America, beekeepers in New York have been experiencing unsustainable losses of honeybee colonies. In 2014-15, annual colony losses in New York reached 54 per cent, according to the Bee Informed Partnership survey. And though losses were lower in preceding years, they ...
By Rob Wallace The notion of a neoliberal Ebola is so beyond the pale as to send leading lights in ecology and health into apoplectic fits. Here’s one of bestseller David Quammen’s five tweets denouncing my hypothesis that neoliberalism drove the emergence of Ebola in West Africa. I’m an “addled ...
By Evaggelos Vallianatos Morton Biskind, a physician from Westport, Connecticut, was a courageous man. At the peak of the cold war, in 1953, he complained of maladies afflicting both domestic animals and people for the first time. He concluded that the popular insect poison DDT was the agent of their ...
