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We are the Guardians of Modern Agriculture!
The Farm-to-Fork Strategy (F2F) of the Green Deal, presented by the European Commission in May 2020 triggered a wide range of responses. “It is a move back in time”; “finally policy attention to...
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My Soccer Ball
One would hardly expect being knocked unconscious by a foreign object to become a cherished memory. Except when that object happens to be a soccer ball rocketing off the boot of the most famous player...
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Towards a Concept of “Better Farming”
The last Risk Corner column introduced a series of opaque definitions of “organic”, concluding that simply identifying it against conventional agricultural techniques was counterproductive. Due to...
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When Will Bio-Reaganomics Finally Come To An End?
Why is it that we cannot create a working system of biodiversity management? Debates have been going on about the question how to conserve biodiversity, promote its use and share the benefits arising...
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Towards an Integrated Food Chain
Have you ever noticed how most food decisions are made in isolation? Retailers make product commitments based on marketing advice; farmers develop cover crop approaches with old technologies;...
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Editorial: A New Way to Absorb News
With so many policies changing, practices evolving and activists fighting agriculture at seemingly every stop, it can be hard to keep up. If there was a way to access detailed, valuable information...
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Sustainable Seed Systems, a basis for UNFSS!
The whole world is discussing the sustainability of food systems in the run up to the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) in September 2021. It is good to look at the whole food chain as a...
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The Turf May Be Artificial, But The Issues Are Real
The Euro 2020 tournament provided us with some excellent soccer matches, all played on natural grass. However, sometimes the simmering controversy about the safety of playing on artificial turf comes...
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Time to Pull the Plug on the Precautionary Principle
Twenty years is a long time in the wilderness. Since 2001 and the European Environment Agency’s publication, Late Lessons from Early Warnings, the European Commission has applied an activist...
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What’s Up Doc?
Remember Bugs Bunny’s classic question, “What’s up Doc?” I’ll tell you what’s up. Carrot consumption! Why? Because those polyethylene-bagged cute little baby carrots are extremely appealing. No...
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From Moral to Legal Obligation – Have We Done Enough?
Is corporate social responsibility becoming a legal liability? That is a question with the upcoming legislation on International Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Europe. The main social...
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The Uses of Gene Editing – A Perspective
Among the long list of New Breeding Technologies established some years ago, the current discussion mainly focuses on one group: targeted mutagenesis or gene editing, more recently labelled as New...
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About the Hard Stuff and the Soft Stuff
Even before COVID, the world was already changing rapidly and how work gets done is evolving. In the past two years this has been accelerated by the pandemic. As a result, how seed companies build...
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Iron in Spinach
Mea culpa. I plead guilty to the crime I often accuse others of committing, namely not checking facts properly! Curiously, I would not have discovered my error had I not been doing some proper fact...
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Climate Benefits from Seed Breeding
Getting innovation right involves aligning so many factors: from research challenges, hard work, insight, determination, committed investments and, usually, a lot of luck. For innovations to develop...
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Village Policies Are All Around Us
Policy making is not an easy task. The famous insight ‘governing is anticipating’ is increasingly difficult with populist trends more and more affecting us. Looking ahead and beyond our own limited...
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Puritans and Blenders: A Deep Dive into Variety Mixtures
Discussions are ongoing in OECD with regard to the certification of variety mixtures in more crops than just the grasses and maize mixtures (such as for ‘refuge in the bag’). It is a discussion with...
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The Wonders of DNA and Genetic Engineering
“Wow!” “Look at my DNA!” the exuberant little boy blurted out as he pulled the thread-like strands out of the test tube. Soon other excited voices chimed in as about two dozen children and a sprinkling...
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Hunger Will Haunt the World from Russian Aggression
When Russia brutally invaded the Ukraine in February 2022, war in the world’s breadbasket could only forebode greater tragedies to come. Large percentages of global exports of wheat, maize, soy,...
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Revitalizing IPM – Old Principles Addressing New Challenges
The revitalization of integrated pest management (IPM) principles through contemporary sustainable agriculture initiatives is an opportunity to diversify and advance pest control strategies. The focus...
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