Filed under: Food & Farming
Seeds, soils, farmers and food systems: who grows our food, who owns the inputs and what keeps farming diverse.
Cultivated meat: a reality check
Six years after the first approval, cultivated meat is legal in a few places, banned in others and sold almost nowhere. The biology explains most of why.
Agroecology on the farm: what changes, season by season
Agroecology is a practice before it is a policy. What changes on a working farm, the FAO's ten elements in plain words, and the trade-offs to admit.
Soil carbon: what the science can promise, and what it can't
Soils hold vast amounts of carbon, but gains are hard to measure and easy to lose. What 4 per 1000, carbon credits and farmers can realistically expect.
Bitter honey: Bt rootworms, GM pollen and the Mayan beekeepers
From resistant rootworms in Iowa to a European court ruling and Mayan honey in Campeche: how GM crops ran into bees, and how Mexico answered.
Farm data: who owns what your tractor knows?
Yield monitors, telematics and farm apps collect huge amounts of data. Who can use it, what the repair fight is about, and what to ask before signing.
Canada's biofuels law on trial: Bill C-33 and the warnings of 2008
In June 2008, mid food crisis, Canada's Senate passed a law to require biofuel blending. How did the critics' warnings hold up?
The FAO, biotech and who gets to speak for farmers
In 2010 the FAO held a biotech conference in Guadalajara as Mexico opened fields to GM maize trials. How the agency has shifted since, and what hasn't.
Biofuels and transgenics: the tortilla, the tank and who pays
Mexico's 2007 tortilla crisis was an early warning. How the biofuel push collided with food prices, how crops were bent toward fuel, and who pays.
UPOV 91 and seed laws, explained from the ground up
What the 1991 UPOV convention requires, why trade deals keep asking for it, and what it means for farmers who save, swap and sell their seed.
Top ten seed companies, 2007 to today: how a ranking became a big four
A 2007 ranking of top seed firms already looked concentrated. Then came the 2015–2018 mergers. How the market got here, and why it's hard to measure.
Gene-edited plants and the EU: what Parliament voted for, and what happens next
The European Parliament backed a two-tier regime for gene-edited plants, with a patent ban attached. What the categories mean and what still has to happen.
Reading concentration ratios in agribusiness: CR4, the HHI and what they prove
CR4 and the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index explained with worked examples, and what meatpacker and grain-trader figures can and can't prove.
