A few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review.  Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.

Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline:…

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The UK Royal Society’s long-awaited study on improving agricultural productivity and increasing food security was released this morning.  Although I’ve only had a chance to skim the report, it seems to have lived up to its promise of eschewing politically correct pop-environmentalism and instead embracing the use of science and technology for producing more food on less land.  The report acknowledges that farming is an inherently un-natural and ecologically disruptive endeavor.  But, it suggests that a healthy concern for protecting the environment necessitates…

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Last week, Bill Gates announced at the World Food Summit in Des Moines that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would be redoubling its efforts to improve agricultural productivity among poor farmers in less developed countries.  He announced that the foundation would be making $120 million worth of new grants for agriculture research and development.  Importantly, Gates eschewed the politically correct approach urged by major environmental organizations and explained, as Reuters put it, that:

“The fight to end hunger is being hurt by…

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Every Friday the CDC website publishes a situation update on swine flu with figures updated through the previous week, though some of the data is newer. And every week the hysteria-minded media ignore it. Statistics get in the way of articles filled with doom and gloom, of body bags and cemetery land set asides.

Anyway, why consult the data when you can offer plenty of anecdotes about people suffering from a “flu-like illness?”

But for those who do care about how our alleged…

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He may have saved a billion people from starvation, but, if you asked a random sample of reasonably well educated Americans who Norman Borlaug was, they’d probably answer, “Norman who?”

I’ll tell you Norman who.  His biographer, Leon Hesser, called him the Man Who Fed the World.  Science reporter Gregg Easterbrook called him the Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity. I’ve called him a Modern Prometheus.  And comedians Penn and Teller said (well, mostly Penn said) that he was the greatest human being…

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Congratulations to Pamela Ronald, a UC Davis plant pathology professor, on winning one of this year’s Science in Society Journalism Awards, sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers.  The award is for a column Ronald wrote for the Boston Globe last year, and which was based in part on her wonderful book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetic and the Future of Food, co-authored with her husband Raoul Adamchak.

Ronald and Adamchak, who is an organic farmer, reject the dogma that only…

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On Saturday, The Times of London published a news article under the headline “Organic food is a waste of money”. The hard-copy print edition of Saturday’s Times also, I’m told, featured two pages of price and quality comparisons showing that, in a blind tasting, consumers generally preferred the taste of conventionally produced foods to that of organic foods.

“The most striking finding of our survey was that the organic ranges scored worst, or joint worst, at three out of the four…

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In the new movie “Julie & Julia,” Meryl Streep does well portraying the late Julia Child, but one can say Streep also benefits from her subject.  The much-loved food author and pioneering television chef had a vibrant personality and passion about preparing food that made millions of Americans welcome her into their kitchens. It’s likely that no matter who played Julia in a biopic, her legions of fans would have flocked to the theaters.

So it is strange that Streep acts so…

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Over at the Washington Examiner’s Opinion Zone, I give nanotechnology a Schumpeterian treatment. In the long run, a competitive, cut-throat market process driven by innovation is better for consumers than if government were to fund and direct research:

A nanotech firm that lives mostly off of government grants lives a sheltered, more docile existence. It doesn’t need to come up with new products that save peoples’ lives, or make them better. They just have to be good at getting grants.

…

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Over at Science Progress, a web magazine published by the Center for American Progress, former USDA biotech regulator Val Giddings and U. of Illinois microbiologist Bruce Chassy offer the Obama Administration a well-reasoned and scientifically-sound blueprint for reforming the irrational and burdensome regulation of biotech crops.  They write:

In summary, biotechnology applied to agriculture has enormous potential to enhance our ability to develop seeds for improved crops and for enhanced livestock to enable us to meet the food, feed and fiber challenges of…

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In Zimbabwe, the most food aid-dependent country in the world, officials and self-styled “consumer activists” have begun raiding shops suspected of selling genetically-modified food, The Zimbabwean reported earlier this week.

[The Consumer Council of Zimbabwe] which fights for the rights of consumers last week started to inspect and recommend that shops selling GMO foods should be closed. CCZ said the GMO foods which have flooded Zimbabwe were mostly powered milk, meal-mealie, rice and chicken.

“We have received a lot of reports of people, mainly…

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This year, we at the Competitive Enterprise Institute are suggesting that those who will be celebrating Earth Day remember the challenges presented by living in the natural world, and the inspiring ways that human beings have worked to overcome them. This new perspective is celebrated in a short video titled “Humans Make Earth Day Better.”

While Earth Day has previously focused on traditional concerns like pollution and recycling, we think it’s also a perfect time to think about the challenges human…

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Christina Hoff Sommers writes about a looming liberal war on science. Based on a campaign promise Obama made to feminist groups in October 2008, Sommers foresees the Obama Administration moving to artificially cap male enrollment in math and science classes to achieve gender proportionality — the way that Title IX currently caps male participation in intercollegiate athletics. The result could be a substantial reduction in the number of scientists graduating from America’s colleges and universities.

Critics have long argued that the Title…

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In the March 2009 issue of the Atlantic, Virginia Postrel recounts her recent successful battle with breast cancer and notes that she may not have had such a happy outcome if she lived in New Zealand. Following surgery to remove several tumors, Postrel’s doctors prescribed the monoclonal antibody Herceptin, which regulates cell division and can keep some cancerous cells from dividing uncontrollably. Herceptin has a 95 percent success rate in early-stage cancers like Postrel’s. And, although it’s been just a short…

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The papers have been filled the past few weeks with stories about the recent peanut contamination problem. And, as this article from today’s New York Times, and this from Saturday’s Washington Post, indicate, the conventional wisdom is that America’s “food safety net” is badly frayed due to Bush Administration cut-backs in FDA spending. As is typical, the problem isn’t so simple.

Unfortunately, as long as the world’s food production system continues to be highly decentralized and fragmented, there will continue to…

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Sigrid Fry-Revere has a post over at The Hill Blog questioning the merits of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. As her new CEI paper co-written with Molly Elgin, Public Stem Cell Research Funding: Boon or Boondoggle?, points out, “It is impossible to know how successful [stem cell] research will be or whether any individual projects will produce genuine medical treatments, and it is not the place of government to gamble with taxpayers’ money.”

Over at The Hill Blog, she writes:

“Furthermore,…

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Earlier, I and Alex Harris criticized the Agriculture Department for banning a company from testing for mad cow disease.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has now upheld that ban.  Law Professor Jonathan Adler laments the unfortunate consequences of the ruling here.  I earlier discussed how this ban may harm American exports and beef consumption here. 

The court ruling came in the case of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef v. USDA

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It’s no surprise to many readers of this page, but governments in North America and Europe often funnel millions of dollars to activist groups that turn around and use those funds for lobbying purposes. Over at www.gmobelus.com, long-time biotechnology reporter Andrew Apel uncovers the latest developments.

Do you live in Europe? If you don’t, do you want to be governed by European policies? It turns out, Europe’s governments pay hundreds of millions of Euros annually to groups which export Europe’s attitudes…

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So far, nanotech has been left blessingly unregulated by the feds. Nanotech has been responsible for the great advances in computer technology. It offers the possibility of cheap genome sequencing. And it generates new, better materials for everyday uses.

But now, states and locals are stepping in and beginning to regulate nanomaterials. The main concern is apparently toxicity. But nanomaterials are very safe and scientists are already examining their toxicity. Nothing is terribly unique about nanomaterials; we are already bombarded with objects on the same…

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California has sent cease-and-desist letters to companies that provide direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing. California is worried that the results of the test aren’t very useful for customers, since data on the mutations DTC companies test for are generally limited. Most of the mutations DTC companies test for do not have 100% penetrance - if you have the allele, you will not necessarily get the disease. But the results of the tests may still be somewhat useful now, and probably more so…

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