Agricultural Biotech

The last three administrations have mandated updates and improvements to reduce unjustified regulatory burdens on biotech innovations, but only small steps have been taken where large ones are required, and the present turmoil threatens to impede improvements.

2024 showcased breathtaking biotech breakthroughs—from mucosal immunity to gene-edited organ transplants—proving the future of innovation is brighter than ever, if we overcome the obstacles holding it back.

A new irrigation technology incorporating AI sensors reduces water use by 30 percent and methane emissions by 47 percent compared to continuous irrigation methods.

Mexico's newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum, can reverse President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's anti-innovation policies toward genetically modified maize, and improve the lives of small farmers across Mexico.

As L. Val Giddings writes for the Center for a New American Security, thanks to technological advances and sound policies, the United States quickly emerged as the global leader in agricultural biotechnology innovation.

Gene editing and genetic modification hold enormous potential to deliver solutions to multiple climate change challenges. The most important rate-limiting obstacles impeding their development and deployment are not technical, but rather counterproductive policies and regulations. These are driven in part by the mistaken apprehension of widespread public opposition. These obstacles are described and solutions to overcoming them are presented.

The landscape is rich with opportunities for gene-editing solutions to address many of the challenges of climate change. But which should be pursued first, and how can they best be galvanized?

Trying to force the green transition with government regulations, subsidies, and exhortation will not work. The economic reality is that clean energy technologies must reach price/performance parity with dirty energy (P3).

Clean energy technologies need to reach price/performance parity with dirty energy—and biology may well be the most promising source for innovations that can achieve that goal.

Biotechnologies have seen remarkable, rapid advances and the discovery and development of powerful new techniques. But nothing has changed that presents new or unique hazards, and the same steps long required to streamline and improve relevant regulations remain valid, albeit even more urgent than before.