Monitoring and enforcing competition rules is essential to level the playing field for fairer food markets.
Harvesting soybeans in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Brazil exports soybeans and uses them domestically to make animal feed and biodiesel.
Paulo Fridman/Corbis via Getty Images
A new study finds that by 2030, less than one-third of the world’s major crop harvests will go directly to feed people.
Planting corn near Dwight, Ill., April 23, 2020. Virtually all corn seeds planted in the U.S. are coated with neonicotinoid insecticides.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Studies suggest that seeds coated with neonicotinoid insecticides may harm nontarget insects, mammals and birds. In response, states are starting to restrict use of these products.
Soybean plants on an Arkansas farm. Those at left show signs of damage from dicamba; others at right were planted later in the season.
Washington Post via Getty Images
Farmers are stuck in a chemical war against weeds, which have developed resistance to many widely used herbicides. Seed companies’ answer – using more varied herbicides – is causing new problems.
Most U.S.-grown soybeans are genetically modified, so products containing them may be required to carry the new ‘bioengineered’ label.
Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images
The US has required motor fuels to contain 10% biofuels since 2005. As this program nears a key milestone in 2022, farm advocates want to expand it while critics want to pare it back or repeal it.
Agricultural commodity prices spiked after cyclone Kenneth had hit northern Mozambique in 2019.
Getty Images
Small and medium-scale farmers and agri-businesses in Southern and Eastern Africa, which are at the heart of inclusive food value chains, are not receiving fair prices for their produce.
A deforested piece of land in the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, in the state of Rondonia, in northern Brazil, on Aug. 23, 2019.
Carl De SouzaA/FP via Getty Images
Because Brazil’s economic prosperity in the last two decades is increasingly linked to the Amazon’s good health, restoring the country’s economy is a critical first step toward ending deforestation.
American farmers have suffered the most as a result of China’s retaliatory tariffs yet surveys show they still back the president and his trade war.
Soybean farmers in Brazil sued Monsanto for a royalty collection system that they say violates their planting rights. A soybean harvest in Mato Grosso, Brazil, March 27, 2012.
AP Photo/Andre Penner, File)
Karine Eliane Peschard, Graduate Institute – Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement (IHEID)
Farmers worldwide say Monsanto’s policy of charging for every use of its genetically modified seeds violates their planting rights. But judges in these patent law cases aren’t so sure.
China retaliated with tariffs on U.S. imports after Trump imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports.
Reuters/Ng Han Guan
As climate change alters temperature and rainfall patterns, yields of some crops are increasing while others decline. The net result: less food, especially where it’s most needed.
An Iowa farmer holds some of his soybeans.
Reuteres/Kia Johnson
Many of the crop plants that feed us waste 20 percent of their energy, especially in hot weather. Plant geneticists prove that capturing this energy could boost crop yields by up to 40 percent.
Farmer Michael Petefish walks through one of his soybean fields in southern Minnesota.
AP Photo/Jim Mone
The Trump administration’s promise of $12 billion in aid to offset losses from retaliatory tariffs will not make up for the long-term consequences of a prolonged trade war.
Not interested in your new favorite band.
TJ Gehling
An AC/DC-loving biologist tests the band’s 1980 assertion that “rock ‘n’ roll ain’t noise pollution.” Turns out it can be – and the negative effects of noise can ripple through an ecosystem.
Soybean seeds treated with neonicotinoids (blue) and treated corn seeds (red) versus untreated seeds.
Ian Grettenberger/PennState University
US farmers are planting more and more acres with seeds coated with neonicotinoid pesticides. An ecologist explains why this approach is overkill and may be doing more harm than good.