The European Union operates an effective ban on new gene-engineered seeds and risks missing out on the "invisible revolution" that's developing crops for cleaner fuels or washing detergents, the industry says. Innovation by companies such as BASF AG and Bayer CropScience AG in developing nutritional changes to corn, plants for use in biofuels as well as food and feed crops that resist drought or disease is changing the market for genetically modified technologies. Innovation by companies...

If you have to use pesticides, use horticultural oil; insecticidal soap; or Bt, a bacterium that controls such pests as gypsy moths. Every year, hundreds of thousands of bees are trucked from their home apiaries to farms, sometimes in distant states, where they are set out to pollinate crops. There are other insect pollinators bumblebees, some wasps and a fly that looks like a wasp but fuzzy little honeybees are the biggies. Use integrated pest management to balance beneficial insects and...

With apologies to Alfred Lord Tennyson, the arrival of spring, season of love and renewal, has once again been marred by the return of the ubiquitous box elder bug. General all-purpose insecticides will work, but according to howtogetridofthings.com, the most effective usually include the following chemicals: When the weather turns cool, they seek shelter inside houses, crawling in through cracks and crevices in walls, around windows and doors and around the foundation, where they will...

South Africa's largest farming association, Agri SA, has pledged to publicly act against any farmers who are misusing pesticides or otherwise endangering neighbours through toxic pollution. The warning follows reports that widespread pesticide poisoning around Groblersdal, Limpopo, may be responsible for teenage boys growing breasts, as well as increased incidents of cancer, miscarriages, ear infections, and partial facial paralysis. Johan Minnaar, and is being investigated by a high level...

Johns County school officials said Friday that testing at an elementary school in Hastings found "no pesticides within detectable limits,'' but they stopped short of saying a science fair project which prompted the testing was flawed. After their project became public, the school district hired MACTEC, a Jacksonville consulting and engineering firm, to do professional testing. MACTEC reported it had collected six samples on three different days and determined the detection levels for...