Hugh Grant

Monsanto The figures from the United Nations are daunting: By 2050 our current food production will have to be doubled to feed an anticipated world population of 9.3 billion. Add shortages to the global water supply, climate change and the need for energy conservation, and the obstacles to feeding the world are even greater. <blockquote>“We have the capacity to double the yield in our corn, soy and cotton crops, while consuming one-third less fertilizer and water.”</blockquote> <a href="http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/mon_news.html" target="_blank">Monsanto Co.</a> (MON), which reported fiscal 2008 revenues of $11.4 billion, is applying innovation and technology to help farmers overcome these challenges by producing more crops using fewer natural resources. Monsanto’s research and development pipeline is vast — R&D spending works out to about $2.6 million a day, says Monsanto Chairman, President and CEO Hugh Grant, including the company’s efforts to map the plant genome in order to get the most out of each seed. “We have the capacity to double the yield in our corn, soy and cotton crops,” Grant says, “while consuming one-third less fertilizer and water.” Even with tough global economic conditions, Grant points out, meeting the world’s spiraling food demands remains a constant. “We can do that in one of two ways,” he says. “We can either chop down more trees and plow down more land, or we can use the existing farm footprint and just get a lot better at what we do. The latter is a cool idea, but it’s a great business model as well.”

The technology needed to help achieve Monsanto’s goal of doubling its crop production while using one-third less fertilizer and water is found largely in several products being introduced over the next three years, according to Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant. The first, which debuted this spring, is a new soybean seed called Roundup Ready 2 Yield™ that enables farmers to increase the crop’s yield by 7 to 11 percent a year on the same acreage. To address water supply issues, Monsanto says it expects to introduce new drought-tolerant seeds for corn in 2012. The appeal of these new seeds, explains Grant, is that they “sip rather than gulp water.” “This is a big deal to the grower,” the CEO says. “Even though we think of farmers as living and sleeping inside their corporation, they’re pretty technologically advanced. For every square yard they harvest, they know exactly how much they’ll yield. Talk to any farmer for more than 10 minutes and you wind up talking about water.”

<a href="http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/mon_news.html"target="_blank">Monsanto</a> <ul> <li>HQ: St. Louis, MO</li> <li>2008 Revenues: $11.4 billion</li> <li>Employees: 26,400</li> <li>Global: 61 countries</li> <li>Fortune 500: 235 </li> </ul>

2009-07-21T16:05:29-05:00

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What is your approach to R&D?

Hugh Grant

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Monsanto focuses on feeding the world

Monsanto improving farming techniques to fight world hunger.

Monsanto, Hugh Grant, United Nations, food supply, water, hunger

monsanto

2009-08-04

Helping farmers to produce more crops while using fewer natural resources.

Hugh Grant

2009-10-26T12:58:45-05:00

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