Op-Ed

To Save Family Farms, We Must Oppose Monsanto-Bayer Merger

The pending Monstanto-Bayer merger will increasingly limit farmers choices while increasing the price of required agricultural inputs. Congressional candidate Austin Frerick is out to right this wrong, restore competition within the market, and save family farms.

Growing an Agricultural Revolution in Puerto Rico

Today marks 100 days since Hurricane Maria made landfall, and Puerto Rico is still importing 95 percent of its food. It’s time to talk about the island’s right to food security by way of food sovereignty.

The Ghosts of Feasts Past: How to Reduce Food Waste

Americans waste more than 165 million kilograms (364 million pounds) of food every day but two-thirds of residential food waste in the United States is edible. Meanwhile, 1 in 8 people in the U.S. do not have regular access to food.

How Wine is Closed Shouldn’t Be A Guessing Game

Overall wine sales are 67% higher in the week leading up to Christmas compared to an average week and consumers should know more about how their wine is closed and how a simple neck hanger that outlines the environmental benefits of cork forests can promote transparency, sustainability, and awareness.

Mondelēz International’s Cocoa Life Program Promises Farmers a Sweeter Deal

The world’s largest chocolate company sets the standard for corporate sustainability in food, targeting 100-percent sustainably-sourced cocoa.

Accra’s Growing Green Movement

Like many cities throughout the world, Accra has yoga studios, organic produce deliveries, and weekly green markets. But it also has toxic traffic fumes, clogged open drains, and plastic-lined beaches. Sustainable might feel like it’s for the middle class—but environmentalists are trying to change that.

Keep Your Eyes on the Price: WTO Remains Blind to Agricultural Dumping

Farm leaders from around the world were greatly disappointed in the outcome, or lack thereof, at the biennial World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires. If the WTO is to fulfill its mandate to support development and reduce unfair trade, it has to keep its eyes on the prize of fair prices and address illegal dumping.

Tapping into Ancient Strains to Bring Heat-Tolerant Wheat to Senegal

A group of scientists won the 2017 Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security for applying advanced breeding techniques to strains of primitive and modern wheat to develop a set of durum wheat varieties that can not only withstand constant 35 to 40 degree Celsius (95 to 104 degree Fahrenheit) heat, but also grow remarkably fast, in only 92 days.

Swigging Cashew, Sorghum, and Sugarcane: the Ghanaian Entrepreneurs Competing for Ghana’s Drinkers

In a country that relies heavily on imports, Ghanaian entrepreneurs are taking matters into their own glasses, providing drinkers with tipples that help local farmers and national pride.

India’s Public Stockholding: “Much more than a welfare program”

India’s food security and stockholding program uses precisely the same policies that the U.S. used in its early farm policy coming out of the Great Depression. Exactly the same: price supports, food reserves, administered markets, subsidies. The U.S. government used them because they work. India and other countries should be allowed to use them, too. Because they work.

WTO and Food Security: Biting the Hand that Feeds the Poor

India’s National Food Security Act (NFSA), is one of the most ambitious food security initiatives in the world, planning to buy food grains from small-scale farmers to distribute to some 840 million poor Indians, two-thirds of the country’s people.

Vote With Your Turkey: How Your Holiday Purchase Can Save Lives

Americans eat approximately 40 million turkeys on Thanksgiving and another 22 million for Christmas. Consumers have an opportunity this holiday season to help move turkey producers away from misusing life-saving medicines.

The Tea Industry: A Model for a Sustainable Future

First discovered 5,000 years ago in China, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world, besides water, and more than half of Americans drink tea on a daily basis. Consumers are increasingly demanding fair trade, organic practices, and sustainable farming.

Artificial Intelligence in the Food Industry: Empowering Farmers’ Decision-Making

Can artificial intelligence save our food system? In the final piece of her three-part series, Chiara Cecchini investigates the main challenges and opportunities of this niche, exploring how we might use artificial brains leverage to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being.

Artificial Intelligence in the Food Industry: An opportunity, not a threat

Can artificial intelligence save our food system? In part two of her three-part series, Chiara Cecchini investigates the main challenges and opportunities of this niche, exploring how we might use artificial brains leverage to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being.

Artificial Intelligence in the Food Industry: How to empower consumer decisionmaking

Can artificial intelligence save our food system? In part one of her three-part series, Chiara Cecchini investigates the main challenges and opportunities of this niche, exploring how we might use artificial brains leverage to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being.

“Food Evolution” Documentary Supports GMOs, but Not Science

The recently released documentary “Food Evolution” fails at exploring the central issue of the safety of the most common genetically engineered (GE) crops. Any reasonable discussion about the science of GMOs and the products they were designed to use must include such debate.

Escaping the Consumer Trap

It’s become normal to talk about people as consumers in relation to food. But a new report from UK-based organizations the New Citizenship Project and the Food Ethics Council argues this language and its associated ideas create a fundamental barrier to the change we need.

The Plight of Jamaica’s Small-Scale Coffee Farmers to Climate Change

BCFN Alumni Anne-Teresa Birthwright discusses how climate change is pushing small-scale coffee farmers in Jamaica towards new realities.

Less and Better Meat is Key for a Healthier Planet

The University of Oxford’s Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) recently released a new report titled “Grazed and Confused” to examine whether grass-fed beef is good or bad for the climate but failed to account for the many environmental, animal welfare, and health benefits of well-managed, pasture-raised animals.

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