Gene editing could also make a significant difference in making agriculture more sustainable. By helping plants and animals become more resilient to climate change and disease, the technology could lead to a more resilient and affordable food supply.

Best Food Facts contacted three experts – Dr. Rodolphe Barrangou, Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, Dr. Zhongde Wang, Professor at Utah State University, and Dr. Jennifer Kuzma, Goodnight-NC GSK Foundation Distinguished Professor in Social Sciences at North Carolina State University and co-founder and co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center – to find out more about gene editing and its use in food production. Read more in the series:

• What is gene editing?
• Are gene-edited foods safe to eat?

Improving animal welfare

In much the same way that gene therapy is being researched to cure diseases in humans, researchers are using gene editing to help animals. Dr. Wang’s lab at Utah State University is among the first to employ gene editing techniques to improve the genetics of livestock.

“In livestock, we are in the process of editing the genomes of cattle, sheep, goat and alpaca both for agricultural and medical applications,” he said. “In livestock, gene editing can be used to make the animals disease-resistant and better able to handle cold and heat stresses.”

Here are a few real-world examples of how gene editing is being applied to help animals live better. Gene editing is helping pigs develop resistance to a devastating virus called PRRS (Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome), which affects pork producers all over the world. For cattle, the FDA recently approved the sale of beef from cattle with genes altered with CRISPR to have shorter hair. These “slick coat” cattle are better acclimated to live in warm climates.

Safety for animals and people

Is gene editing safe for the animals involved?

Dr. Kuzma: “Animals are regulated a bit more stringently by the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA has a mandatory policy to review all animals that are genetically altered, which provides more assurance of safety.”

Is it safe to eat food made from animals that have been edited?

Dr. Wang: “With scientific vigor, regulatory oversights and approvals, it is safe to consume foods from gene-edited animals.”

Learn more about the safety of gene edited foods.

Improving sustainability

By helping farmers to grow more food by using less land and water, gene editing could make agriculture more sustainable. Dr. Barrangou is researching gene editing to enable trees and forests to be more resilient to climate change.

Dr. Barrangou: “Think of bio-resilience as the ability of something to sustain itself in the face of global warming, in the face of drought or pest, whether it’s insects, viruses, bacteria or fungi. If you’re a tree and you’re in place for hundreds of years, you can’t go and escape. You can’t migrate north if it’s getting hot. You can’t migrate closer to the water if it’s getting dry. So we have to breed in those resistance traits to provide a more sustainable and resilient forest, whether you’re going to use that to grow fruits or nuts or capture carbon.”

Gene editing helps scientists to speed the natural process of breeding and reproducing, which makes it especially important in regard to climate change.

Dr. Barrangou: “The sense of urgency and timelines under which we can develop those products is very important. There’s a heightened sensitivity and urgency to address sustainable farming.”

Gene editing is an emerging technology used to treat disease in humans and animals. It could also help scientists develop plants and animals that are more resilient in the face of climate change.

The post How Can Gene Editing Make the Food System More Sustainable? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

These technologies have become common on farms because of many benefits they provide for farmers, consumers and the environment.

GPS, sensors, and other digital tools and data analytics are called precision ag, or information technology applied to agriculture, said Dr. Terry Griffin, associate professor at Kansas State University.

“Farming uses technology rivaling the most digital of industries,” Dr. Griffin said. “Just like many of the cars our readers drive, farm equipment collects diagnostic data to push up to the cloud so that the manufacturer and farm operator can access that data for their purposes.”

Oswald became interested in precision agriculture because he wanted to protect the soil on his northwest Iowa farm.

“Our land here is gently rolling and I really wanted to focus on reducing soil erosion. I decided I needed to do something to better hold the soil on our gently rolling slopes,” he said.

Oswald began by reducing tillage – or the amount the soil is disturbed to plant seeds. When GPS technology became available, he used it to take soil samples to get an accurate picture of the soil in specific locations. Now, nearly every piece of equipment on his farm is equipped with precision ag technology. Innovation is now available to ensure exact seed placement, make precise applications of fertilizer and herbicide, monitor yields and guide tractors.

“By deploying technology, we can better place the products we’re putting in the field so we can do more with less,” Oswald said. “It’s like a killer app. Once you use it, you don’t want to quit.”

Farmers use a variety of technologies that work together to give them detailed information about their soil and crops grown for food ingredients and animal feed, such as soybeans, corn and wheat.

“Automated guidance is analogous to self-driving cars – at least for making parallel passes in the farmer’s field. Instantaneous sensors on crop harvesters measure yield, moisture, and quality characteristics every few seconds; and with GPS this data can be georeferenced into a map,” Dr. Griffin said.

That data is then used to determine the optimum plan for each precise location to grow crops using as few resources as possible.

“With knowledge of how soil nutrients vary spatially across the field, prescription of soil fertility amendments can be developed to apply fertilizer at site-specific or variable rates across the field. In the last decade, farm data has been a major consideration, especially with respect to aggregating individual farm data into communities of big data,” Dr. Griffin said.

How does precision ag improve sustainability?

Precision agriculture helps make farming more sustainable in many ways. By precisely applying fertilizer, seed and crop protection products, these state-of-the-art technologies lessen the environmental impact of farming. Farmers can also control their costs, which helps them to be economically viable so they can continue to farm. This also helps to keep food costs affordable as it enables growing more food while using less land.

Dr. Griffin said there have been some unexpected benefits, as well.

“When automated guidance was commercialized about 20 years ago, the technology seemed to have ubiquitous advantages for reducing overlap and allowing equipment operators to work additional hours in a day,” he said. “One of the greatest benefits was not measured with dollars but with satisfaction and improved quality-of-life from less fatigue. The less fatigued equipment operator could translate into greater satisfaction of the entire rural household from improved social relations.”

Looking forward, Dr. Griffin expects more automation to be involved in farming.

“In the past, tedious manual tasks have been automated; in the future, more complex tasks that typically have required humans with advanced skill sets will be automated,” he said. “The first steps have already been completed with data collection via sensors and transferring data to the cloud. Think of how self-driving cars have automated the task of navigating a busy street by replacing the human driver; then apply that type of technology to removing humans from the decision-making process.”

One day, precision farming might be combined with other advances, such as gene editing, to develop plants with disease or drought resistance, Oswald believes. Learn more about gene editing in agriculture.

“I think gene editing has powerful potential for humankind in understanding and addressing issues through genetics,” he said. “Because it is a precise modification, plants could be made better suited for the environment where they’re going to be growing. The next step could be a gene-edited crop that is planted in a specific part of the field.”

Farmers control much of precision ag technology through their cell phones.

“Mobile devices play a key role for each of the players in this system, and the importance of mobile devices is only increasing as precision agriculture becomes the order of the day for 21st-century farmers,” Dr. Griffin said.

Farmers use precision agriculture to apply the latest technology to help them grow enough food using fewer inputs and natural resources.

Developed with support of United Soybean Board.

The post How Do Farmers Use Technologies to Produce More With Less? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

This is an especially exciting time as scientists are seeing their research applied in the field, leading to food that is healthier, better quality and more sustainably produced.

High-oleic soybean oil is the first gene-edited food product available on the market. This heart-healthy oil has zero trans fats, longer shelf life and performs well in baking and frying.

“We wanted to use gene editing to create a soybean variety that was higher in monounsaturated fats and compete effectively with oils like sunflower, canola or olive oil,” said Dr. Dan Voytas, a professor at the University of Minnesota, who helped develop the gene-edited high-oleic soybean.

The innovation was possible because gene editing allows for very precise changes in the plant’s genome, Dr. Voytas said.

Dr. Steve Whitham is working to improve soybeans, an important crop that is used in food, oil and animal feed. One goal of his research is to make farming more sustainable by helping farmers grow more using fewer inputs and natural resources.

“It’s estimated that we lose 15 to 20 percent of the soybean crop to diseases each year,” said Dr. Whitham, professor at Iowa State University and co-director of the Crop Bioengineering Center. “In the last severe drought in 2012, we lost 9 percent of soybean yield. Disease and environmental stress such as drought are important factors that prevent the soybean crop from reaching its full yield potential.”

Researchers are also using gene editing to increase the protein content of soybeans for use in plant-based foods and as a source of feed for animals.

Three years ago, Best Food Facts spoke to Dr. Jessica Lyons at the University of California-Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI) about using gene editing to improve cassava, an important part of the diet for nearly 1 billion people in the world. The plant contains compounds that can cause people to be poisoned from cyanide if the root has not been sufficiently processed. If people are ingesting the cyanide, over time, this can lead to neurological disorders.

For the team developing the cassava plant, the project has personal meaning.

“Growing up in a Colombian family, I knew cassava by the name yuca. It would be part of many delicious meals at home. So for me, there is a personal connection to working on this crop,” said Dr. Michael Gomez, also of the IGI. “I was surprised to learn about cassava’s toxicity and how it could negatively affect consumers in dire circumstances. Generating non-toxic cassava is a stellar use of the CRISPR technology and has the potential to mitigate global food challenges.”

The researchers are excited to see their research come to fruition.

“We have shown, in three different cassava varieties, that we have completely prevented cyanogenesis. That is, we have used genome editing to make plants that don’t make cyanide,” Dr. Lyons said. Read more about the research here.

What is gene editing?

“Gene editing is a very precise way of modifying genes within a plant cell. The types of edits that we create are no different than the variation in genes that occurs in nature,” Dr. Whitham said.

CRISPR is one common technique used for gene editing. The process is a way of speeding up the natural evolution of genetics.

“Traditional breeding methods can be laborious and time-consuming. With gene editing, the desired DNA alterations can be acquired within a single generation and the end product could be indistinguishable from a traditionally bred crop,” Dr. Gomez said.

How can gene editing help the environment?

In addition to improving food, gene editing can also help farmers control diseases and adapt to changing environmental conditions.

“There are many benefits to the environment by reducing the carbon footprint of producing soybeans, as well as reducing the application of crop protection products,” Dr. Whitham said. “We’re learning more about genes that control plant responses to disease and stress.”

By precisely editing these genes, the plants can be made to better resist disease and withstand stress. Scientists see many ways gene editing can be applied to create climate solutions.

“Genome editing is a great precision breeding tool. Against the backdrop of a rapidly changing climate, there’s an urgent need for new climate-resilient crop varieties, and this tool has the potential to help us breed them more quickly and more precisely than conventional breeding,” Dr. Lyons said. “It can have huge benefits for agriculture, including for disease resistance, and even for climate change mitigation — for example, it could be used to engineer plants with deeper roots that store more carbon in the soil.”

Dr. Voytas said gene editing might be used to develop soybean oil that is similar to palm oil. That enhances sustainability, as palm oil production often leads to deforestation and the oil must be transported great distances.

“We could easily use gene editing to create a palm oil equivalent that is produced locally and sustainably,” he said.

Gene editing is a technology being used to make precise changes in genetic material to improve food quality and increase the sustainability of farming and food.

Developed with support of United Soybean Board

The post What Benefits Can Gene Editing Bring to Food Quality and Sustainability? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

From enhancing our favorite foods to helping farmers grow healthy, abundant crops in a sustainable way, gene-edited soybeans offer so many benefits.

Learn more about why Gene, scientists, farmers and those who produce our food are excited about an amazing technology that makes life better for you and our planet.

The post Meet Gene the Bean! appeared first on Best Food Facts.

But where does bacon come from? How is it made?  And should we feel okay about indulging in its crispy goodness? Is bacon sustainably produced?

We traced back to the farm to see what we could learn about bacon’s back story. Good bacon starts with the care of the pigs, said Dr. Joel DeRouchey, an Extension specialist in swine nutrition and management at Kansas State University.

“Animal husbandry practices are essential to raising healthy pigs that produce wholesome pork products,” he said.

Animal husbandry includes all the practices that go into caring for the animals.

“This involves a relationship with a veterinarian to help monitor herd health, well maintained housing facilities that provide the proper environment and temperature,” Dr. DeRouchey explained. “Above all, it involves well trained caretakers of the pigs. Pig farmers and their employees go through training in pig care, pig observation and health observation, among many other areas of the Pork Quality Assurance Program.

Pork Quality Assurance is an education program that includes food safety, animal well-being, environmental stewardship, worker safety, public health and community.

It’s well known that pigs like to eat. Their feed is a mixture of ingredients to meet their needs at every stage of growth.

“Pigs eat a nutritionally balanced diet that contains a complete mixture of grain (generally corn but in some locations also wheat or sorghum), protein (generally soybean meal), feed-type amino acids and vitamins and minerals to meet their body needs for growth and health,” Dr. DeRouchey said.

The farm’s location and nearby feed sources also affect pigs’ diet, he explained. Pigs sometimes also eat co-products from corn and wheat processing, bakery food blends from human food processing and fats and oils.

“When pigs are fed a nutritionally balanced diet, they develop the proper lean muscle as they grow which allows them to have the highest quality meat possible. This means minerals such as zinc and various vitamins that make pork more nutritious to eat,” Dr. DeRouchey said.

Pork producers have taken steps to make farming more sustainable. These changes have made it possible to produce more bacon using fewer natural resources.

“A focus on continuous improvement over the past 55 years in raising swine has led to a reduction in land use by 76 percent, water use by 25 percent, decreased energy needs by 7 percent and carbon footprint by 7 percent for every pound of pork produced,” DeRouchey said. Read more.

The pigs also enhance sustainability by producing their own fertilizer.

“Pork producers are dedicated soil conservationists by properly returning manure nutrients to the soil to raise the feed for future pigs and other uses of grains and protein crops,” he said.

Growing crops such as soybeans and corn that pigs eat has also become more sustainable. Crop farmers use practices such as:

• Rotating crops and planting cover crops to improve soil health
• Reducing the amount of tillage or “digging up” the soil
• Using GPS and precision technology to ensure crops receive just what they need at the right time.

Together, these practices make farming more sustainable, which means more bacon with less impact on the environment. Read more.

Once the pigs are fully grown, they are transported to a processing facility where they are harvested. Dr. Travis O’Quinn, associate professor of animal science and industry at Kansas State, explained what happens during processing.

“After the animal is harvested, it is typically chilled for 18 to24 hours. Following chilling, the carcass is broken down into various primal cuts – ham, Boston shoulder, picnic shoulder, loin and belly,” he said.

Each pig will yield about 130 pounds of retail meat – including 35 pounds of bacon. That’s enough for 175 BLTs!

“Bacon comes from the belly, or the section of meat that is removed from the sides and belly of the animal,” Dr. O’Quinn said. “To produce bacon, bellies are skinned and then injected with a brine solution that contains salt, sugar, sodium nitrate and other flavorings. Then the bellies are typically tumbled to allow for brine uptake and protein extraction.”

Then, the real flavor comes in.

“Following tumbling, the bellies are smoked and cooked in a commercial smokehouse with smoke applied either through natural hardwood smoke or liquid smoke application,” he said.

Different techniques produce various bacon flavors.

“Most commonly, different types of smoke (hickory, apple, maple, etc.) produce different flavors of products. Other times additional flavorings – jalapeno or black pepper – are added on top of the finished bacon immediately prior to packaging,” Dr. O’Quinn explained.

Once the bellies are smoked, they are chilled, pressed, sliced, packaged and transported to restaurants and stores. When looking over those packages of bacon, Dr. O’Quinn shared advice on how to choose the best bacon.

“The key characteristic consumers should evaluate when purchasing bacon should be on the lean-to-fat ratio. Higher amounts of lean and lower amounts of fat in a bacon slice is most desirable,” he said.

Bacon comes from pigs who are cared for on the farm and fed ingredients that are sustainably raised. In processing, the belly is specially prepared to produce wonderful bacon goodness.

The post How Is Bacon Produced? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

The relationship between food waste and processed foods, as well as the connectedness of biotechnology with food affordability and accessibility, were just two of the thought-provoking topics during the 2020 Best Food Facts TASTE Tour.

This year’s tour went virtual, with the influencers involved in one of three video conferences. The discussions were:

• Sustainable Food with conversations about food waste, processed foods, biotechnology and food affordability
• Sustainable Egg Farming, providing dialogue on hen housing and impacts on animal well-being, food affordability and natural resources
• Sustainable Crop Farming with a focus on crop practices and environmental stewardship

The tour was part of Optimizing Sustainability. Learn more about the project.

“Our main concern with our food supply right now is the amount of waste that we have. We are wasting so much of our food,” Dr. MacDonald said during the conversation on sustainable food. Processing is one of the most effective ways to make our food system more resilient, she said.

“That’s not sustainable when you think about a third of the food that we produce is just going out into the trash. We have to balance this idea that processing is a negative. It really isn’t. If you process foods, they stay fresher longer. You don’t have to throw them away after a couple of days,” Dr. McDonald said.

Julie Tran Deiley, who blogs at The Little Kitchen, said the tour changed her perception about processed food.

“I feel like she’s right. It is essential to sustainability because if we only used fresh foods, we have more food waste,” Deiley said. “So that really opened my eyes and it made me think, well okay it’s fine that I use the processed foods in my cooking and my everyday life.”

Dr. MacDonald also talked with the influencers about chemicals used in food and the impact they have on making food more sustainable.

“We have used the FDA as our governing body for assessing what ingredients can go into food and which ones and how much they can be used in what kinds of food systems,” she said.

Sometimes people pick out a specific ingredient on a food label and avoid it because it is a chemical.

“But everything in food is a chemical. Something like tocopherol or arachidonic acid might sound like a really horrible thing, but both of those are essential nutrients,” Dr. MacDonald said. “So you can’t just automatically assume that because it has a chemically sounding name it’s somehow bad for me. Those ingredients all have a function in there and they’re used in a way that has been tested and shown to be safe.”

The insights struck a chord with Rachael Yerkes of Eazy Peazy Mealz.

“One of the things that she mentioned is that everything in food is a chemical, so when we look at a package of processed food and we see chemicals, we sometimes get like leery of that food. But that’s not something to be afraid of, because everything in the food already is a chemical,” she said.

Other experts who were part of the discussion were Jennie Schmidt, a registered dietitian and farmer from Maryland, and Amanda Moder, a registered dietitian with Hy-Vee.

The Cookie Rookie Becky Hardin said what she learned on the TASTE tour gave her confidence with her food choice.

“The FDA does approve all of those ingredients that are on shelf-stable foods so I can trust those. I don’t have to go through with a fine-tooth comb every single item that I buy. If I trust the brand and I trust the ingredients that I’m seeing, that’s a great thing and I can feed our family longer. We can feel good about doing that,” she said.

The tour was part of Optimizing Sustainability, an initiative of The Center for Food Integrity that supports understand and prioritize factors to decisions that are most sustainable. In addition to the tour, Best Food Facts examined sustainability impacts and the topics of grass-fed and grain-fed beef, pesticides and GMOs. Learn more about the project and read all of the influencers articles.

The post A Conversation On Sustainable Food appeared first on Best Food Facts.

Farmers are developing new and innovative technologies to improve the sustainability of crop farming, influencers learned during the 2020 Best Food Facts TASTE tour.

We hosted nine digital influencers for a virtual tour in July. The tour, originally planned to be in-person in central Iowa, was reformatted into three virtual discussions on these topics:

• Sustainable Crop Farming with a focus on crop practices and environmental stewardship
• Sustainable Food with conversations about food waste, processed foods, biotechnology and food affordability
• Sustainable Egg Farming, providing dialogue on hen housing and impacts on animal well-being, food affordability and natural resources

Brent Renner, an Iowa farmer, spoke to the influencers through a video call from his tractor to discuss the techniques that he uses to grow crops in the most sustainable way.

“Along with GPS, the monitor that steers my tractor is also capable of a lot of other things,” Renner said. “In regards to sustainability and trying to do more with less, which is another way to put it, is applying the perfect rate of whatever product you’re using, whether it’s chemical, fertilizer or insecticide, on the exact spot that it needs to be targeted.”

Dave Walton, who also farms in Iowa, said farmers have been funding research to find practical ways to make crop farming as sustainable as possible.

“We’re going to take that to a level that would boggle your mind,” he said. “Instead of using satellite imagery, which is kind of the standard now, we’re going to get to the point where you’re going to see little robots maybe the size of somebody’s little toy truck. There’s going to be a hundred of them running up and down the field taking pictures of plants in real-time and looking for leaf disease or insects or something that creates a stress on that plant. This technology is going to get down to the plant level, so we can treat one plant if that plant’s affected or 10 plants in a row if those 10 plants are affected.”

The influencers found the information presented by the farmers and other experts during the virtual tour very informative as they and their followers consider sustainable food choices. Other experts who took part in the tour were Shannon Tolliver, social responsibility and environmental sustainability manager for White Castle Systems, and Janet Helms, DVM, global sustainability developer Inter IKEA Group.

“My main takeaway was really about how they are constantly striving to be on the cutting edge of technology and striving to have the most efficient ways of farming both for their bottom line but also for the sustainability of their farm and the environment in the long run,” said Lisa Longly, who blogs at Wine and Glue.

Jocelyn Brubaker of Inside Bru Crew Life said she was surprised by the level of technology that farmers use.

“I’d say the thing I want my readers to know the most would be that farmers are always trying

to learn more. They want the land to continue. They want to be able to pass this land down to

future generations their kids, their grandkids, so they’re always doing more,” she said.

Farm tours have given Lynne Feifer, 365 Days of Baking, a greater awareness of the work that agriculture producers put into their work.

“It’s a 24/7 job and if we didn’t have farms, honestly, we would not have food. It’s important that we support these farmers. I feel that they are the backbone of America, and we need to keep them going. It’s so important,” she said.

The tour was part of Optimizing Sustainability, an initiative of The Center for Food Integrity that supports understand and prioritize factors to decisions that are most sustainable. In addition to the tour, Best Food Facts examined sustainability impacts and the topics of grass-fed and grain-fed beef, pesticides and GMOs. Learn more about the project and read all of the influencers articles.

The post A Conversation About Sustainable Farming appeared first on Best Food Facts.

Egg farming and hen housing were topics that bloggers were able to explore with farmers, animal veterinarians and retail purchasing directors during the Best Food Facts 2020 TASTE Tour. The tour was part of Optimizing Sustainability, an initiative of The Center for Food Integrity. As farmers make decisions about how they raise animals and produce food, they need to consider the variety of inter-related impacts – benefits and tradeoffs – that result from various production practices.

Best Food Facts hosted nine digital influencers for a virtual tour. The tour, originally planned to be in-person in central Iowa, was reformatted into three virtual discussions focused on these topics:

• Sustainable Egg Farming, providing dialogue on hen housing and impacts on animal well-being, food affordability and natural resources
• Sustainable Crop Farming with a focus on crop practices and environmental stewardship
• Sustainable Food with conversations about food waste, processed foods, biotechnology and food affordability

Learn more about Optimizing Sustainability.

Erin Sellin, who blogs at Dinner, Dishes and Desserts, asked Bruce Dooyema of Center Fresh Egg Farm what was a common misunderstanding people have about the ways eggs are produced.

“Being a farmer all my life – I don’t care what kind of weather situation –  if there’s something wrong in a chicken house the farmer is going to be there to take care of it so that he takes care of his hens. His livelihood depends on it,” Dooyema said. Center Fresh Egg has farms in Iowa and one in Mozambique.

Sellin said before the tour, her perception of how eggs were produced is that the hens were all in one small place and that the care of the animals was not a top priority, but her perspective changed  through the tour.

“They are doing everything they can to make sure that the hens are taken care of in the most sustainable way possible for both the farm and the hens themselves,” she said.

Cameron Hall, farm manager of Iowa State University Robert T. Hamilton Poultry Research and Teaching Facility, also answered influencer questions about caring for hens and producing eggs sustainably.

“One of the acronyms that we really try to focus on to think about our job here on this farm is FLAW – feed, light, air, water. Anything in our toolbox that helps us to focus on providing quality feed, providing the light to those birds, quality air and quality water, that’s all going to go into the sustainability for me,” he said.

Janet Helms, DVM, is the global sustainability developer with IKEA Group. “A consumer wants to know that the animal is cared for. Coming from a suburban background, would say that all the farmers that I’ve ever worked with care about the animals under their wings, the animals that they’re providing care for,” Dr. Helms said.

The influencers learned about different types of hen housing systems and the benefits and drawbacks of each.  Learn more about the different types of hen housing.

“The thing I want my audience to know about hen care is that there are a lot of pros and cons to all different types of ways to raise hens,” said Lisa Lin who writes the blog Healthy Nibbles and Bits.

“In terms of enriched colony egg farming, although hens are raised in a more confined space, it does allow the farmer a greater ability to monitor and manage the health of chickens because they’re not running around, said Lin. “There’s also pros and cons to cage-free and pasture-raised farming. The cage-free and pasture-raised egg farming, although they allow chickens the ability to roam about freely, we also need to be concerned about how chickens under those egg farming systems might also be exposing themselves to dangers,” such as predators and disease.

“There’s a lot of pros and cons. Not any particular system is the perfect system. So we just need to think about, think through the pros and cons of each,” Lin said.

Other experts who also participated in the tour were Colby Newbold, director of dairy and frozen purchasing for Fareway Stores, Inc., and Dr. Dan Thomson, professor of animal science, Iowa State University.

Cathy Trochelman blogs at Lemon Tree Dwelling and said she was glad for the opportunity to take part in the virtual tour.

“It’s so hard to know where to get your information from and it’s really nice to hear from people who are directly in the business because that’s really the perspective that I believe I can trust,” she said.

The tour was part of Optimizing Sustainability, an initiative of The Center for Food Integrity that supports understand and prioritize factors to decisions that are most sustainable. In addition to the tour, Best Food Facts examined sustainability impacts and the topics of grass-fed and grain-fed beef, pesticides and GMOs. Learn more about the project and read all of the influencers articles.

The post A Conversation on Sustainable Egg Farming appeared first on Best Food Facts.

This fourth post in our series examines the methods used to raise and feed cattle for beef. Most beef cattle live in grass pastures most of their lives. After calves are weaned from their mothers, they may either be “grass fed” or “grain fed” and sometimes a combination of these two methods.

Tradeoff

Dr. Tara Felix, beef specialist with Penn State Extension, explains the difference between the two methods in an online video, which looks at the benefits and tradeoffs from a farmer perspective.

Grass-fed beef comes from cattle raised primarily on grass, pasture or hay. Some grass-fed beef programs include non-grain products, such as soyhull pellets and others. Grain-fed beef comes from cattle who are fed a diet of high-energy grains, which includes corn, soy meal and other ingredients. Grain-fed beef may also be called corn-fed.

Grass-fed versus Grain-fed Beef: What’s the Difference?

Learn more about What Do Cows Eat?

Questions around the sustainability of beef have recently been raised, as studies have examined the greenhouse gas emissions linked to livestock and beef production. An article by Tamar Haspel in the Washington Post explained some of the key considerations and noted there are many connected factors, including methane emissions, manure management, specific feeding and cropping practices, and more. “Some grass-fed cattle are better for the planet than some grain-fed, and vice versa,” Haspel states.

“No matter what strategy you choose, there are always trade-offs,” Dr. Rattan Lal, director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, stated in the article.

We reached out to Dr. Jason Rowntree, associate professor in animal science at Michigan State University, who is conducting research to better understand sustainable ways to raise cattle. Dr. Rowntree became interested in the topic while he was researching beef cattle at Louisiana State University. He and his family lived in Baton Rouge when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused extensive damage to the area and many farms.

“I began thinking about the resiliency of our food system. We do have a solid food system, but I wanted to find out how to make our food system better and more resilient,” he said. “For any system to be sustainable long-term, it’s got to be something we can sustain environmentally, it has to be profitable, and it’s got to be a system that can be supported socially.”

Some conversations about beef production sustainability involve greenhouse gas emissions linked to livestock and beef production.

“There’s always balance to this discussion,” Dr. Rowntree said. “We understand that science is revealing the fact that we have made some mistakes in how we grow food. We’ve been addressing things strictly from volume perspective. We are learning about actions that have a better impact on the environment and contribute to food security.”

About 80 percent of beef in the United States is grain-fed. Because the animals receive a high-energy diet, they reach their final weight faster, which reduces the amount of land and water required.

“If we want more land for wildlife and recreation, it means we have less land to grow food on. If we have less land to grow food on, we then focus on how to be more intense and efficient, which can have deleterious effects to the environment. A balance is needed,” Dr. Rowntree said.

His current research is looking at ways to improve grass-fed beef operations. On the research farm, Dr. Rowntree and his colleagues study various practices, such as working to add carbon to the soil, increasing biodiversity and selecting cattle with genetics best suited for grass feeding. The results have been promising.

“As our land has gotten better, we can run more cows on less land and with fewer inputs. Our research has actually shown we can produce beef with a net carbon sink to the environment,” Dr. Rowntree said.

But, he noted that there are tradeoffs. “Grass-fed does require more land to produce the same amount of food. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”

He is hopeful that the research will find ways to reduce costs for beef farmers, which can support affordable beef for consumers, help farmers be profitable and improve the long-term sustainability of farming.

“Ranchers are people. Farming families are people. Farmers have to feed their family day in and day out,” he said of his work to improve farmers’ livelihoods.

Both grain-fed and grass-fed systems can be sustainable, Dr. Rowntree believes. He said there are many misunderstandings about beef production. For instance, not all grain that is raised goes into animal feed, because much of it is used for other purposes. Research has shown that cows do not produce as much methane gas as was once believed.

“Cows are ruminants, which means they can upcycle nutrients from plants that we can’t. They eat grass from untillable ground, so grazing cows are not taking away from land to grow crops,” he said.

Beef cattle are either grass-fed or grain-fed. Grass-fed beef takes more time and requires more land to produce the same amount of food, while grain-fed beef concentrates animals in smaller areas and requires land and water to grow crops. Both methods of raising beef can be sustainable from the perspective of the environment, animal well-being and farmer livelihood.

Learn more about Optimizing Sustainability.

The post Sustainability: Can Eating Beef Be Sustainable? appeared first on Best Food Facts.

Genetically engineered plants or animals, often called GMOs, were developed through biotechnology and often carry genes from a bacteria or virus. Biotechnology has been used to help crops better withstand drought, be resistant to insects or be better suited to control weeds. Genetic modifications can help animals to better utilize the feed they eat. Find out What foods have been genetically modified?

GMOs and Sustainability

In this series, we are looking at sustainability and the inherent tradeoffs and benefits of specific practices in farming and food production.

To learn more about biotechnology, we reached out to Dr. Pamela Ronald, a distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California-Davis. She has gained worldwide recognition for her work in genetically engineering rice to better withstand plant diseases and flooding.

“Rice is an important staple food crop for more than half the world’s people, so it’s really important to work with,” Dr. Ronald said. “Even a small change that you can make in the ability of the plant to survive stress or resist disease can have an impact on millions of people.”

Are GMOs good or bad?

That depends.

First, Dr. Ronald said the biotech foods are safe to grow and to eat. “There’s no question about that. They’ve been planted for 25 years now,” she said. “They have reduced the use of chemical insecticide, and I think that’s really important for people to know.”

Find out more about GMOs and human health.

Dr. Ronald also explained that biotechnology is just one of the tools farmers can use to help produce food. When farmers have access to a variety of tools or techniques, they can choose the ones that work best for each crop, for each location and for each situation.

“All farmers rely on seeds to grow their crops, and farmers are looking for seeds that help make agriculture more productive and sustainable,” Dr. Ronald said. “They want to use less land, use water more efficiently, use soil more efficiently. They want to reduce the use of harmful inputs. Every type of contribution can be really important for farmers.”

Dr. Ronald’s husband is an organic farmer. She noted that every type of farming has tradeoffs. As an example, in order to grow a crop, the soil must be disturbed and native plants are removed.

The key is weighing the impacts, tradeoffs and benefits, and then making an informed choice. “We farm because we have to eat,” she noted. “It’s a huge tradeoff. How do we farm more sustainably and try to minimize our impact on the environment?”

Some farmers have found that GMOs can contribute to making farming more sustainable. Dr. Ronald gave an example of farmers in Bangladesh growing eggplant. Previously, farmers needed to spray insecticide several times a week during the growing season to save the crop from destructive insects. In recent years, they have planted a genetically modified eggplant seed that contains a gene from a bacteria that prevents the insects from reproducing. As a result, the farmers use much less insecticide spray, the crops have yielded more eggplant from the same amount of land and families have a better income. You can learn more about it in Dr. Ronald’s Ted Talk.

Because there is a lot of misunderstanding and incorrect information about GMOs, Dr. Ronald encourages those with questions to explore reputable sources of information, such as the National Academy of Sciences. or the USDA.

“I think it’s important to realize that all farmers rely on seeds that have been genetically altered in some manner. The method is not important. What matters is what kind of trait that’s being imparted to the plant,” she said.

“It’s always good to just think about the challenges faced by farmers. Floods come through, which is predicted to occur more frequently with climate change. Then some farmers can’t grow their crops because there’s not enough water. Some farmers’ crops are devastated by insect pests. So anytime you can develop crops that are resistant to insects, it can have a massive benefit to farmers.”

Weighing the Benefits and Tradeoffs

GMOs and biotechnology have both benefits and tradeoffs. The benefits are that GMOs can help plants or animals grow more efficiently, which means more food produced using fewer natural resources. GMOs can reduce the use of insecticides and harmful herbicides.

On the other hand, GMO crops often involve the use of the herbicide, glyphosate, which is concerning to some consumers. Some perceive that food produced through GMOs is less natural, because of the modification process and introduction of genetic material not native to the original organism. Some people have concerns that genes from the modified plants or animals could transfer to other organisms. There are also concerns that farmers’ reliance on certain types of GMOs could contribute to biodiversity loss or cause over-production.

In the United States, some people have reservations about biotechnology that is owned by corporations, and they worry this could put small companies or farmers at a disadvantage. In other countries, such as in the case of Bangladesh’s eggplant, the seeds were generated by non-profits and distributed free to farmers.

Biotechnology should not be viewed as a one-size-fits all solution to farming challenges. It must be managed in conjunction with other techniques.

“It’s not that once you choose biotech over another approach, that’s it. It really depends on the particular farming system and what’s being used at the time,” Dr. Ronald said.

Science is a continuum with each researcher’s work building on others. Biotechnology can be part of the solution to make agriculture more sustainable around the world.

GMO involves the genetic modification of plants and animals to improve crops and food production. With any practice, there are tradeoffs and benefits. Many experts concur that GMO technology offers tools and solutions that farmers can use to make food production more sustainable.

The post Sustainability: Are GMOs Good or Bad? appeared first on Best Food Facts.