Agricultural biotechnology is a range of tools, including traditional breeding techniques, that alter living organisms, or parts of organisms, to make or modify products; improve plants or animals; or develop microorganisms for specific agricultural uses. Modern biotechnology today includes the tools of genetic engineering. Today we will be exploring the ins and outs of agricultural biotechnology. How does it make an impact on the ag industry? How will it help with the rising population? Plus, the importance of these modern agricultural innovations.

GMO’s, or genetically modified organisms, are living organisms whose genetic material has been artificially manipulated in a laboratory through genetic engineering. This creates combinations of plant, animal, bacteria, and virus genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods. We have a fascination with these organisms, and many times the connotation is very negative. In fact, the google searches for GMO have skyrocketed to 600,000 a month, according to a 2018 study done by the non-GMO project.  However, this fascination is mostly recent, despite the fact that humans have been genetically modifying organisms for over 30,000 years. The real question that we all want answered is, are GMOs really a good thing? If they are, is this true all of the time? Can they cause harm to humans? Or are they just misunderstood? In today’s episode we will be exploring all of this and more as we dive into genetically modified organisms.

Like any good business marketing is a key.  In fact, agriculture has their own form of marketing called agriculture marketing! It is very useful in taking agriculture products from the farm to a consumer. It is what makes you so tempted to buy one brand of chicken over the other, or one brand of grape from the other. However, could there be marketing ploys in agriculture? Is there really a difference from those two brands of chicken or grapes? Are some of these organisms tampered with? In today’s episode we will be exploring all these questions and more as we look into marketing in ag!

Invasive species, I think most of us know what they are, but in case you didn't, invasive species are organisms that are not indigenous to a specific region. These organisms can cause great economic and environmental effects. In fact, approximately 42% of endangered species are at risk due to invasive species. Today we are going to explore the effects of these invasive species, and how we might go about solving this rising problem.