Archived News

May 2010

Green VS. Green, Part 1
27 May 2010 The Energy Collective
For example, the introduction of Bt Cotton in India has caused chemical pesticide usage in the cotton crop to fall by half even as output has doubled.

Visiting Polish Scientists Impressed with GM Maize in South Africa
27 May 2010 SeedQuest
Van Rensburg pointed out that since switching to GM maize his yield had increased by up to 15%.

Monsanto's Hugh Grant to Address Investors at Bernstein Conference
26 May 2010 Monsanto
Monsanto Company will hold a webcast next Wednesday, June 2, in conjunction with a presentation by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference.

Plant BioTech World Congress to Highlight Scientific Discoveries and Technologies Bringing New Hope to Feeding the World and Improving Lives
26 May 2010 IAPB
Discoveries that can increase crop yields and productivity, create sustainable forests and new medicines, and other advances to improve the lives of farmers and others' lives, especially in the world's poorest countries, will be among the recurring themes of presentations at the upcoming International Association for Plant Biotechnology (IAPB) 12th World Congress, June 6-11, 2010, at the America's Center in downtown, St. Louis, Missouri.

Genetically Engineered Papayas to Hit Store Shelves as Early as Summer
25 May 2010 The Mainichi Daily News
The decision by the Cabinet Office committee for consumer affairs clears the way for the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare to recognize the GM papayas for import and distribution under the Food Sanitation Act once the plan passes a public input phase.

'BT Cotton's Success Must Be Emulated in Other Crops'
25 May 2010 Outlook India
BT cotton has benefitted the farmers and helped them reap rich dividends.

Breakthrough in Quest to Boost Rice Yields
24 May 2010 New Scientist
Jiao's team put the mutant gene into new rice varieties using genetic engineering and, under field conditions – the acid test for any rice plant – rice yields increased by 10 per cent.

GM Research Gets $9m Boost
22 May 2010 The West Australian
The Barnett Government has stepped up its support for genetically modified crops by announcing $9 million over four years to further develop and adopt biotechnology for WA farms.

Plant Science Technologies Help Preserve Biodiversity While Increasing Food Production
21 May 2010 CropLife International
Biotech crops are already contributing to higher yields for many farmers around the world.

GE Crops Get Clean Bill of Health
21 May 2010 Western Farm Press
That’s because an independent panel of scientists has determined that GE crops undeniably benefit farmers and the environment.

A Brief History of Unnatural Selection
21 May 2010 Jewish Journal
Genes have been inserted into crops to make them more resistant to disease and the molecular mechanisms of some genetic diseases have been discovered.

Area Farmers Ponder 'Plant B' After Once-In-Lifetime Flood
20 May 2010 The Commercial Appeal
The Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation and Monsanto Co. have donated $50,000 to the Tennessee Disaster Response Fund, which is managed by The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

Monsanto Moves Ahead on Lower Fat Soybean Oil
20 May 2010 The Des Moines Register Blogs
Monsanto this week took another step forward in the development of the next generation of reduced fat soybean oils when he received permission from the Food and Drug Administration to begin commercial tests of the Vistive Gold zero trans fat oil it hopes to introduce into the market by 2012 or later.

Monsanto's Enhanced U.S. Portfolio, Best-in-Class Seeds and Traits Designed to Deliver Unit Volume Growth in 2011
19 May 2010 Monsanto
Developing and deploying best-in-class seeds and traits that return value to farmers is what Monsanto does best, Begemann will say, and is the driver of the company's expected mid-teens earnings per share growth opportunity beginning in 2011.

Failure to Ban GM Crops Welcomed by Farmers
19 May 2010 ABC News
The Federation's president Mike Norton says the use of GM technology is well and truly warranted.

All The News That Fits
19 May 2010 Forbes
As professors Ronald and McWilliams conclude, an understanding of advances in agriculture "means recognizing that genetic engineering can be used not just to modify major commodity crops in the West, but also to improve a much wider range of crops that can be grown in difficult conditions throughout the world.

Roth Monsanto’s Big Winner
19 May 2010 Stuttgart Daily Leader
Richard Roth of Stuttgart has been selected as a winner in Monsanto’s America’s Farmers Grow Communities Project, which gives $2,500 to Roth’s charity of choice.

Improved Soybean Oil Achieves Milestone That Will Advance Development of Foods With Reduced Saturated Fat and No Trans Fats
18 May 2010 Monsanto
In keeping with a commitment to provide new options for agriculture and a more health-conscious public, Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON) announced today that the company has reached an important regulatory milestone that will advance the development of foods with reduced saturated fat and reduced or no trans fats.

Long-term Study: Cultivation of Bt Maize Does Not Affect Earthworms
18 May 2010 GMO Safety
For most of the four earthworm strains that were present in the test fields it was irrelevant whether Bt or conventional maize was growing on the trial area.

Oklahoma Farm Mom Voted Monsanto's America's Farmers Mom of the Year
17 May 2010 Monsanto
Monsanto's America's Farmers Mom of the Year is part of the company's America's Farmers campaign, which celebrates the contributions of America's farmers, who help provide food, energy and clothing for our growing planet.

Gates Backs GM Crops: Tech Must Help Farmers, Feed Rising Population
16 May 2010 Indian Express
Giving his full support to the use of genetic engineering in agriculture, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates today said if the world continued to produce food with existing technologies it would not be able to feed its increasing population.

COMESA Urge Genetically Modified Seed Among Members
16 May 2010 The Sunday Post Zambia
COMESA secretary general Sindiso Ngwenya has urged member countries to consider genetically modifying their seed to increase yields in the region.

Monsanto Company Donates Conventional Corn and Vegetable Seeds to Haitian Farmers to Help Address Food Security Needs
13 May 2010 Monsanto
The Haitian Ministry of Agriculture approved a donation from U.S.-based Monsanto Company to Haitian farmers of $4 million worth of conventional hybrid corn and vegetable seeds to be made over the next 12 months in support of reconstruction efforts.

MEP Hits Out Over GM Crop 'Dogma'
10 May 2010 The Scotsman
Struan Stevenson said that far from being "Frankenstein Foods", as propagated by the European green lobby, GM crops represented a golden opportunity to boost food production.

Biotech in Africa: In South Africa, The Welcome Mat is Out
10 May 2010 The Des Moines Register
More than 70 percent of South Africa's latest corn crop, the country's largest in decades, is biotech.

GM Crops a Must?
09 May 2010 Gerson Lehrman Group
The way the global population is increasing, we must embrace the GM technology so that we can produce more from less land and resources.

Biotech Cotton in Burkina Faso
07 May 2010 Truth About Trade & Technology
Burkina Faso is also the second country in Africa to grow biotech cotton and has positioned itself to be more economically profitable regardless of what happens to public policies in other countries.

Biotechnology is Future of Farming
07 May 2010 Daily Review Atlas
Currently, 93 percent of soybean production in the United States uses herbicide resistant plants and 73 percent of corn production is herbicide or insect resistant.

Genetically Modified Food and the Global Fight Against Hunger
06 May 2010 Farmer Gene
The continued adoption rate of biotechnology-enhanced crops on farms around the globe is stunning and clear testimony to the value gained by each producer when making the decision on the type of seed they plant.

Monsanto's Enhanced Product Strategy Creates Momentum; Industry-Leading Products Poised to Deliver for Farmers, Company
05 May 2010 Monsanto
Monsanto Company's (NYSE: MON) enhanced product strategy will serve as the backbone of expected unit volume growth to drive its mid-teens earnings growth opportunity, Chief Financial Officer Carl Casale will tell investors today at the UBS Global Agricultural Chemicals and Seed/Biotech Conference in New York.

Agriculture and Food: The Genetically Modified Crop Marches On
04 May 2010 Financial Times
Crops with combined or “stacked” traits are becoming increasingly important. This year, Monsanto will launch SmartStax maize, which has eight added genes coding for three traits.

Defining Sustainable Agriculture
04 May 2010 Corn and Soybean Digest
However, the primary benefit of using GMO seed is to control weeds and insects that damage crops, with less dependence on herbicides and insecticides that increase crop production costs, and potentially cause more threats to the environment and human health.

Increasing 'Crop Per Drop' Critical, Says Monsanto's Fraley
04 May 2010 Monsanto
Speaking before the University of Nebraska's Water for Food Summit, Monsanto Company Chief Technology Officer Dr. Robb Fraley echoed his company's commitment to help farmers double crop yields by 2030 while conserving natural resources, all while helping to improve the lives of farmers around the world.

Government Supports Genetically Modified Crops In Chile
04 May 2010 The Santiago Times
Agriculture Ministry José Antonio Galilea announced this week plans to introduce legislation to regulate and permit the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in Chile.

ARS Scientists Identify Genetic Resistance to Rice Sheath Blight
04 May 2010 USDA
Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have identified sources of genetic resistance to sheath blight, a major disease affecting rice production worldwide.

Paper Reveals EU Plan to Boost GM Crop Cultivation
03 May 2010 Reuters
The EU executive wants to let national governments decide whether or not to grow genetically modified crops without a long drawn-out review of the bloc's current GM legislation, an initial impact assessment seen by Reuters showed.

Innovation Campus Billed as Food Research Model
03 May 2010 Lincoln Journal Star
At the conference Tuesday, Monsanto's chief technology officer, Robb Fraley, will step to the podium to describe its progress toward drought-tolerant crops and other magnifiers of food production.

The Whats and Whys of Biotechnology
02 May 2010 The Grand Island Independent
Crops produced through conventional plant breeding without the introduction of GMOs do not go through these testing requirements, assuring that GMOs are the most tested food products in history.