climateanon

I definitely LOL'ed at that. David's has been working pretty hard on the acquisition the last few months and may not have been watching the news lately...

On the other hand, that should be proof that no marketing/PR person touched the email, I guess?

A) Were you unhappy about the acquisition by Monsanto before you read the letter,

Yes, and to some extent I still am unhappy about the acquisition. They have a pretty terrible reputation and that's definitely causes an impact.

> and did you feel differently having read it? If so, or not, why?

No, not really. All of the eng/product people went to Monsanto and got a chance to ask very blunt questions. There are definitely some things they do that I don't agree with (see their lobbying in seattle to oppose the anti-GMO labeling effort,) but overall I'm convinced that they're a vital part of the current food supply.

I actually couldn't get to sleep and then hit the comment limit.

Still around and happy to answer questions.

That's very much not what that law says at all actually. The wikipedia link you pointed to explains it by saying:

"If a biotech crop had already been approved (or deregulated) by the USDA and a court reversed that approval, the provision directed the Secretary of Agriculture to grant temporary deregulation status at the request of a grower or seed producer, to allow growers to continue the cultivation of the crop while legal challenges to the safety of those crops would still be underway.[7]"

If a farmer has made an investment in a crop, it has had regulatory approval by the USDA, and the Secretary of Agriculture believes that the crop which has been overturned by the lower courts is not actually a threat, then they may continue production during interim court proceedings. That seems reasonable to me.

> Do you see Friedberg as a visionary leader?

No, not particularly honestly. He seems like a smart guy, a great salesman/CEO, and really really dedicated. I wouldn't say he has a visionary leader feel to be honest. He already made a good chunk of money w/Google. He's not in it for the money.

> Do you believe the work you are doing is changing the world for the better?

Yes, 40% of the world works in agriculture. In most of the world, bad weather can destroy your entire livelihood. If we can keep farmers from going bankrupt because of bad weather, I'd be okay with that being my life's work. I will likely get to directly improve the life of > a billion people, that's pretty amazing.

Yep, that was supposed to be

Sorry, late night! That first line was supposed to say:

> Relatively recently, almost all of the corn grown in the US was from about of 3 the common "immortal" varieties (~40/50 years ago.)

Not 3 types of grain, 3 types of corn. People have been aggressively breeding seed for a long time. Monsanto has offices all over the world and tries to bring the best varieties of corn and breed them into a number of different high performing lines. I know Monsanto breeders feel like the genetic diversity argument is a little silly because they think they introduce a lot of genetic diversity.

>Sure they are. And they patent it (which is a failing on so many governmental and international levels I find it painful to think about -- I'm all for cataloguing species and genes, but granting patent on something you literally found -- that's even worse than software patents).

Typically what's patented is the GMOs, not the corn that is bred traditionally (which is where > 50% of Monsanto's R&D budget goes to.)

>Now, if all they did was donate some to the world seed bank, and allow everyone to share in their (non gmo) discoveries -- I'd have no problem. But the idea that you might be committing a felony by planting a carrot you bought at the market is revolting.

I agree. To my knowledge, it's only been farmers who had an agreement with Monsanto and violated that who have been sued. See the Schmeiser/Monsanto case for an example.

Relatively recently, almost all of the corn grown in the US was about 3 from one of 3 common "immortal" varieties (~40/50 years ago.) The amount of seed diversity that have been introduced by this breeding is actually substantial, Monsanto is more or less combing the earth for diverse varieties of corn.

I've been told that a lot of their work on drought resistance is having good preliminary impacts on reducing water consumption. They've also purchased us at least in part because of the work we're doing on Climate Pro which is a tool to provide agricultural management for things like irrigation.

But again, give me studies and specific questions and I'll have answers from either the CEO or COO by Friday.

They apparently have a > 90% approval rating amongst US Farmers for what it's worth. They're generally seen to be a solid investment by most farmers. This is what I'm told from internal statistics, so if it's entirely possible it's a bald face lie.

If you have statistics to the contrary I'd love to bring it up our company meeting and get back to you, personally or here.

Disclosure: I'm a Climate Corp Employee.

They're primarily a seed company. Most of the products they have in the pipeline are based on generating resistances to various crop diseases/insects. They try to do this in a variety of ways. GMOs are relatively more expensive then breeding, so that generally tends to be the method of last resort when they can't find a natural resistance to breed in.

The scientists I also talked to mentioned a 30% overall reduction in herbicide used with round up ready plants. That could definitely be propaganda, and if anyone has any hard facts I can ask anonymously at our weekly meeting and hopefully get answers from our executive team.

I'm a climate corp. employee who's happy to answer questions. I'd prefer to remain anonymous, but would generally be cool with answering questions.

Edit: I'll be back around tomorrow to answer questions.