Food for Thought
For seven years now, OrB's Food for Thought Lecture Series has brought internationally recognized experts to OSU to speak about ways that biotechnology can support sustainable agriculture. OSU Press Release
Lectures are free and open to the public. They're held Wednesday or Thursday evenings at 7:00p in the LaSells Stewart Center on the OSU Campus.
Every talk is followed by audience discussion and a chance to mix & mingle with the speaker. Refreshments are provided!
Past FFT lectures are available on iTunes and YouTube, and are accompanied by study guides.
Biotech in the news
Myths about agriculture
The Frustrating Lot of the American Sweet Corn Grower
8 May 2012
American sweet corn growers may be unable to utilize a new sweet corn variety that requires fewer pesticide applications due to pressure from activists.
Vandalism costs taxpayers $400,000
GM pine tree trials vandalised – experts respond
Science Media Centre, 13 April 2012
Genetically-modified radiata pine trees have been destroyed at a facility in Rotorua, New Zealand, operated by the Crown research institute Scion, in what the research organisation has labelled a “blatant act of vandalism”.
It's time to reconnect with agriculture
Farmers Fight - Stand Up
11 April 2012
Farmers Fight is a student-led initiative to reconnect American society to the world of agriculture. Beginning with university students, Farmers Fight encourages consumers to ask where their food comes from, and give students, faculty, public officials, farmers, and ranchers an opportunity to become "agvocates" for the agriculture community.
Marshall Matz encourages us to explain green biotechnology better
USDA’s 150th Birthday: A Teachable Moment
Marshall Matz, 2 April 2012
Marshall Matz asks us to speak out on May 15th to address how scientific advances in agriculture production benefit global sustainability and the environment.
Georgia cotton farmers battle pigweed
Farmers face tough choice on ways to fight new strains of weeds
NPR the salt, 7 March 2012
Cotton farmers in Georgia are battling glyphosate resistant Palmer amaranth, known locally as "pigweed". Stanley Culpepper, weed scientist at the University of Georgia, may have the answer.
The nuclear debate
How Bad Was Fukushima?
TIME, 2 Mar 2012
Early assessments of the health impacts of the Fukushima nuclear crisis suggest that the treat to the Japanese from radiation is extremely low.
United States still world leader in GM plantings
Genetically modified crops had bumper year in 2011
USA Today, 7 Feb 2012
Worldwide plantings of biotech crops increased by 30 million acres to 395 million acres in 2011. The USA again led the world in area planted, followed by Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada.
Farmers go head-to-head at draft EIS public meeting
Biotech beet battle heats up in Corvallis
Gazette Times, 19 Nov 2011
Farmers on both sides of the row over the proposed deregulation of Roundup Ready sugar beets got to have their say at a public meeting held in Corvallis on Thursday November 17. The meeting was held to accept public comment on the draft environmental impact statement for Roundup Ready sugar beets, recently conducted by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
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OrB in the news
The God Species opinion blog
History of Science OSU, 2 Mar 2012
History of Science Master's student, Tracy Jamison, reflects on the recent Food for Thought lecture, The God Species: How the planet can survive the age of humans.
Science Pub welcomes Professor Strauss for season opening lecture
Steve Strauss, OrB Director and OSU Professor, gave a lecture on biotechnology basics at the Bend Science Pub on November 15, 2011. In his lecture titled "Biotech Crops and Foods: Science, Myth and Madness."
He discussed biotechnology basics with a focus on animal biotechnology and the reasons that GMOs remain controversial. His presentation, which included many questions for interaction with the audience using “clickers” (on which they could vote their knowledge and opinions), is available for viewing here. A news article in the Bend Bulletin describing some of his points, and the pub talks for the year, are available here.
Biotech impact on organic
Scientist in the middle of the GM-Organic wars
For OrB advisory board member Carol Mallory-Smith, gene flow is not just a research topic or a matter of policy debate; it’s the cause of a vexing quarrel among her neighbors: the farmers of Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
For all the shortcomings that Mallory-Smith sees in federal regulation, she doesn’t really fit in the anti-GM camp. “I’m a public servant, and that sometimes means that you end up in the middle of these factions,” she says. Still, she hopes that both organic farmers and transgenic farmers can thrive.
Clean energy biotech
GMO regulations hampering the growth of the biofuel industry
Renewable Power News, 6 Oct 2010
Faster development of the promising field of cellulosic biofuels — the renewable energy produced from grasses and trees — is being held back.
In a recent study published in the journal BioScience, scientists argue that major regulatory reforms and possibly new laws are needed to allow cellulosic bioenergy to reach its true potential as a form of renewable energy.
“It’s extraordinary that gene modification technology, [with its] profound environmental and economic benefits, has been regulated virtually out of existence for perennial cellulosic biofuels crops,” said Outreach in Biotechnology director Steve Strauss, lead author of the paper.
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