Some of the key questions we raised as we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the ICABR consortium were “why haven’t GMO crops been accepted and adopted as Green Revolution crops or medical rDNA?” “What are the constraints to the adoption of GMO?” “What are the differences among nations?” Several speakers addressed these questions and here … Continue reading »
food
Searching for coexistence of GMO and organics in Amsterdam
I recently returned from a conference on the co-existence of genetically modified food (GMO) with other food, such as organic. The meeting was on November 17-20 in Amsterdam, which was rainy, cold and windy, an unpleasant departure from the sunny and dry climate of drought-stricken Berkeley that I have grown accustomed to. Fortunately we were … Continue reading »
Guess who’s coming to dinner? Feeding our billions without plowing the entire planet
Who’s coming for dinner? The answer, in case you’re wondering, is “two billion more people.” That’s the population increase predicted for 2050. How are we going to feed those people? One method is to cut down a lot of the world’s remaining forests and plow the world’s remaining grasslands. That’s a bad approach environmentally: it will … Continue reading »
Eco-Puritanism
For years, political divisions over the environment have had the seemingly odd feature that Americans farthest from the open country have tended to be most supportive of protecting the environment, while those nearest to it — farmers and other rural residents — have been most resistant. This split has been muddled in recent years as … Continue reading »
Addis, Lucy and food security
Last week I returned from my second trip to Africa in one month, this time to Ethiopia. I went there as an advisory board member of Food Secure, a large EU research consortium on food security. This was my first time in East Africa, Addis is about 3000 feet above sea level, which means you … Continue reading »
In praise of this year’s World Food Prize Laureates
We recently learned that the 2013 World Food Prize was awarded to three biotechnology scientists, Marc Van Montagu of Belgium, and Mary-Dell Chilton and Robert T. Fraley of the United States, for developing methods of inserting genes from various organisms to plant cells. I find this recognition to be justified and long overdue. The committee … Continue reading »
Can perfectionism lead you to overeat?
It might seem counterintuitive to think that striving for perfection would be related to overeating. Shouldn’t perfectionism, after all, be related to a desire to have the “perfect” figure? The answer, as it turns out, is yes, but recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology(Sherry and Hall, 2009) shows us how unrealistic expectations — … Continue reading »