27/July/20

 

Impossible Foods should really be called Impossible Patents. It’s not food; it’s software, intellectual property — 14 patents, in fact, in each bite of Impossible Burger with over 100 additional patents pending for animal proxies from chicken to fish. It’s iFood, the next killer app. Just download your flavour. This is likely the appeal for Bill Gates, their über investor. It’s a food operating system (FOS), a predecessor, perhaps, to a merger with Microsoft. The business model is already etched in Silicon Valley — license core technology (protein synthesis) while seeking vertical integration of supply chains, which, in this case, is not from coders to users, but from genetic engineers to protein seekers. Medium.com

 

 

Results from greenhouse experiments as well as in field research would suggest that Tennessee now has dicamba-resistant (DR) Palmer amaranth. The level of infestation in any given field ranges from a small pocket where a mother plant went to seed in 2019 to an area covering several acres in a field. When the Xtend GMO dicamba-tolerant crops first came on the scene it was not uncommon to see a stray Palmer amaranth escape dicamba here and there. These escapes would grow very little if at all for 2 or 3 weeks. Then most would be covered up by the crop never to be seen again. The DR Palmer amaranth in some fields today however will start growing again in about 10 days and in unprecedented numbers. University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture

 

 

The Pasture-Fed Livestock Association has published its latest set of Certification Standards, listing what cattle and sheep producers must do to apply the ‘Pasture for Life’ marketing symbol on their produce. Among other requirements, the use of glyphosate on land used by certified enterprises is now prohibited. Farmers Guide

 

 

Traces of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate have been found in New Zealand honey, prompting concern for the country's high-value manuka industry. Jodie Bruning of the Soil and Health Association said the news would come as a “very big surprise” to those who perceive New Zealand to be a “clean green oasis”. “It's tainted, and it's not the beekeepers’ fault, it's the fault of a regulatory environment that doesn't control it enough,” she says. TVNZ