Benedikt Haerlin

Photograph: iStock / nevarpp Yesterday the European Parliament voted to open farm gates – and by extension, our plates – to New Genetic Technologies (NGTs). This is a seismic development that reveals cracks in the EU’s democratic institutions. How now to defend our rights as consumers to choose what we eat? Comment by ARC2020 board member Benny Haerlin. Benny Haerlin at the 2023 GMO free regions event in the European Parliament.

Crop diversification to improve the soil microbiome is key to the approach of the Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) movement. After soil to bread in Portugal, the Seeds4All project continues its exploration of agronomic models rooted in interspecies cooperation as a path to sustainability, with a report from south-eastern India. In March a small Weltacker delegation visited Andhra Pradesh. Benny Haerlin reports.

The field of plant biotechnology is undergoing a profound transformation. The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools is fundamentally reshaping the way genetic engineering is conducted. AI-driven genetic engineering may be vulnerable to well-known limitations of AI, such as the black box effect, hallucinations and data errors, raising concerns that plants with undesirable traits could be engineered and released into the environment. How should the EU respond?