Monsanto fights its
'bad boy' public image
By DAN PILLER
Des Moines Register -
February 28, 2010
Monsanto has an image problem, Chief Executive Hugh Grant
says.
“We’re not who people say we are,” Grant said. “There are a
lot of misperceptions, many based on fear of the unknown, about us.”
The company’s image is improving as it promotes its efforts
to feed the world, provide more healthful grains and use the Earth’s resources
more responsibly, Grant said.
Specialists said genetically modified seeds could help boost
food production, which must rise 70 percent by 2050 to feed a growing
population, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Grant said lines of biotech seeds are planned that will
require less water and nitrogen, helping put Monsanto on the right side of
environmental and climate change debates.
“If we’re debating whether climate change is real, (and)
right now I’m betting that it is, then improvements in
seed technology will be one of the leading ways to combat the problem,” he
said.
The company has faced decades of controversy as one of the
world’s largest maker of controversial pesticides, such as DDT and 2,4-D, the Vietnam-era defoliant Agent Orange and Lasso and
Roundup herbicides.
Monsanto reaches deeply into the supermarket shelves as
maker of the feedstock grains that produce meats, breads and produce, as well
as vegetable oils and ethanol. But it continues to be a lightning rod for
controversy.
Monsanto entered the seed business in the early 1990s and
helped lead the “biotech revolution,” genetically engineering corn and soybean
seeds to resist herbicides and insecticides and to provide better yields.
Although biotech seeds are routinely approved by regulators
in the
The growing movement to organic and locally raised foods is
in part a backlash against what critics call “Frankenfoods,”
which some fear lead the way to long-term genetic and health problems in
consumers.
Last year, the producers of the documentary “Food Inc.” cast
Monsanto as the biotech corporate villain. Blogger Shelly Roche launched RealityBytes.TV, where her anti-Monsanto essays are seen by
about 165,000 viewers on the Internet each month.
“I can see why farmers like the new seeds,” said Neil Harl, professor emeritus at
But Harl said, “Monsanto has
always been seen as the bad boy of agriculture.”
The company has taken several steps to improve its image.
It hosted the late Norman Borlaug at its St.Louis
headquarters, and after Borlaug’s death last year used the Nobel Prize winner’s
words and image to align itself with Borlaug’s green revolution. It has
connected with the Bill Gates Foundation to put its drought-tolerant seeds in
Monsanto also said it is promoting farmers above itself in
new “
Growers “feel misunderstood,” Grant said. “They’ve never
been asked to do more. … If
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