Dan Rejto 🇺🇸🌎🍴
@danrejto
Director of Food & Ag @TheBTI.
Billions of dollars in biofuel subsidies should be cut. They raise food prices, drive farmland expansion, and inefficiently support farmers. The govt should still help farmers deal with China's new tariffs. But through direct aid, R&D, and trade deals. buff.ly/R6wBxqU
EPA should follow the evidence on biofuels. But it’s laying off some of the researchers who estimate their environmental impact. So much for science-based policymaking 🙄
Tough day at EPA's Office of R&D (ORD). An unknown number of "behind-the-scenes" people with #biofuels expertise will be affected, including those who conduct life cycle assessments, support the Office of Transportation & Air Quality, and model the environmental impact of fuels.
Make coke s̶u̶g̶a̶r̶y̶ glass again. It's a small taste test but seems people prefer the glass bottles, not the sugar.
It's remarkable that a top administration official would even mention biodynamics as a real option for farmers. Here's a critique of the system. "Though shrouded in overtly-romanticised metaphysical and spiritual notions, biodynamics offers little in the form of practical,…
RFK Jr. at MAHA roundtable today: “We need to give off-ramps to farmers so that they can transition to biodynamic agriculture..." A cornerstone of this farming approach is stuffing cow horns with manure and pulverized crystals and burying them for the winter.
There's no such thing as chemical-free food. DNA? Chemicals. Water? Chemicals The air we breathe? Chemicals. What matters isn’t whether something is a chemical, but rather whether it’s harmful. And that depends on the dose & composition, not whether its artificial or "natural".
The American people have made it clear—they want real food, not chemicals. Together with @USDA @SecRollins + @US_FDA @DrMakaryFDA, we’re holding the food industry accountable and driving a nationwide effort to Make America Healthy Again.
From celiac-friendly wheat to disease-resistant pigs and drought-tolerant rice, biotech keeps delivering big advances, but only if we don’t block it with budget cuts and regulatory red tape. itif.org/publications/2…
Key Senate spending committee has joined its House of Representatives counterpart in rejecting deep cuts that President Donald Trump’s administration proposed for agricultural research. science.org/content/articl…
We are excited to announce that we are launching a new publication, The Ecomodernist. Under the banner of The Ecomodernist, we will be publishing relevant analyses and essays that seek to build a new environmental paradigm. Read more here: thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-ag…
APHIS just announced they will only conduct NEPA review for new genetically modified organisms when initial assessment determines the organism is a plant pest. This change will speed up reviews of potentially beneficial products 🌱 content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDAA…
How can we fix our food system and stop "eating the earth"? RSVP for this deep dive webinar July 30, hosted by @TheBTI with @MikeGrunwald @p_lehner and @jennysplitter: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regist…
The poorest nations gain the most from GMOs yet often ban them, forgoing economic, food security, and environmental benefits. It's encouraging to see this starting to change.
Rwanda embraces GMOs! Will pilot the growing of three biotech crops —cassava, Irish potato and maize! newtimes.co.rw/article/27329/…
The mission to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) includes MABA — Make American Biotech Accelerate. President Trump showed in his first term what happens when you unlock American science — breakthroughs happen fast. Now, we’re going to do it again. We know the power of U.S.…
The mission to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) includes MABA — Make American Biotech Accelerate. President Trump showed in his first term what happens when you unlock American science — breakthroughs happen fast. Now, we’re going to do it again. We know the power of U.S.…
Another good explanation of how to interpret this new Nature paper on climate change's impacts on crop yields. In short, climate change will likely SLOW growth in yields, not reduce yields from current levels.
This is a very cool, impressive @Nature paper that is worth reading. But the accompanying @CNN headline is very misleading and almost certainly wrong, for the following reasons (links in next post): 1) The paper projects crop impacts forward assuming SSP3 economics and…
Misleading framing in @Nature paper suggests global crop production will decrease by 2100. In fact, it only predicts that crop yields will grow more slowly than if climate change wasn’t happening, meaning they will very likely continue to grow. 🧵 doi.org/10.1038/s41586…
Many think that eating local helps the climate. But exporting more U.S. beef, especially to China, could cut global emissions by millions of tons. Why? American beef has a far lower carbon footprint than beef from Brazil and other major exporters. breakthroughjournal.org/p/how-trump-ca…
Gas in California is about $1.50 more expensive than in the rest of the US. Ending the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, while not a panacea, would help and also reduce support for environmentally dubious biofuels like soy-based renewable diesel.
But CA has two problems: price spikes and a prices that are on average higher than in the rest of the US. Today the CA premium is about $1.50, and a lot of that is environmental programs like cap-and-trade, CARBOB and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard:
California's mandated gasoline blend and low-carbon fuels standard have had their intended effect: raising the price of gasoline and forcing in-state refining capacity to consolidate and close. It's about to get worse, and Newsom/Democrats are panicking. via @TheBTI's @lrntex
The U.S. reverted to biotech rules written in the 1980s. That’s a huge setback. To stay globally competitive and enable more efficient ag, USDA must create modern, product- and risk-based regulations. The Trump admin has an opportunity to lead here. breakthroughjournal.org/p/trump-has-an…
RFK Jr's ideas about food & health are often untethered from the evidence, but his spectacular wrongness is an object lesson. Many of us are wrong in less spectacular ways, but for the same reason. It's all about the natural. Gift link. wapo.st/3R9AJUf
Banning glyphosate would result in shift toward more toxic herbicides and increase costs to farmers and consumers while bringing no public health benefit. New from @EmilyJane_Bass @TheBTI