Time to ‘Rethink’ Agricultural Sustainability
A new report from A Bigger Conversation argues that the concept of sustainability has become distorted and compromised, and needs to be radically rethought. It explores how we can shift to a life-centric approach, linked to a core philosophy that sustainability must first and foremost sustain life.
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Agritech – Transition Pathway or a Trojan Horse?
A new report from A Bigger Conversation shows that while agroecological farmers, working in a values-based system, have an interest in technology that serves those values, they have little interest in technology that does not. Its findings emphasise the importance of a more critical and context-specific approach to technological innovation, which contrasts with ‘hard sell’ of Agriculture 4.0.
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Webinar: Gene Editing – Blurring the Lines Between Nature and Technology
This webinar is part of the Bigger Conversation initiative, which we run at Beyond GM. ‘Natural’ is a much abused concept, and yet it still has meaning to many especially where food and the environment are concerned. The UK government’s document Regulating for the Fourth Industrial Revolution talks about “blurring the lines” between the natural […]
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Gene editing – Solution or Distraction?
Up until a year or so ago, you could be forgiven for thinking that the issue of genetically engineered foods in the UK had faded quietly away. It hadn’t, of course. While consumer scepticism remained a big hurdle to introducing GMOs into the UK food system – and more widely into Europe – genetic engineers were creating new genetic technologies, imagining new ways to apply them to food and farming and, perhaps most importantly, inventing new narratives to position genetic engineering as simply a natural step on the continuum of plant breeding and improvement of our crop species. In the last decade genetic engineering and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) became ‘gene editing’, genetic engineering became ‘biotechnology’ and genetic engineers became ‘biotechnologists’. ‘Sustainable intensification’, ‘nature-based solutions’, ‘precision breeding’ and ‘speed breeding’ have all become euphemisms for genetic engineering.
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