Monsanto is one of the few stocks actually made me some money. Well, my Monsanto stocks just became my new kitchen. I am always pro genetic modified food. I am still waiting the day that they can grow meat on tree.

Nov 19th 2009, The Economist
The debate over whether Monsanto is a corporate sinner or saint

FEW companies excite such extreme emotions as Monsanto. To its critics, the agricultural giant is a corporate hybrid of Victor Frankenstein and Ebenezer Scrooge, using science to create foods that threaten the health of both people and the planet, and intellectual-property laws to squeeze every last penny out of the world’s poor. The list of Monsanto’s sins dates back to when (with other firms) it produced Agent Orange, a herbicide notorious for its use by American forces in Vietnam. Recently “Food Inc”, a documentary film, lambasted the company.

To its admirers, the innovations in seeds pioneered by Monsanto are the world’s best hope of tackling a looming global food crisis. Hugh Grant, the firm’s boss since 2003, says that without the sort of technological breakthroughs Monsanto has achieved the world has no chance of doubling agricultural output by 2050 while using less land and water, as many believe it must. Mr Grant, of course, would say that. But he is not alone. Bill Gates sees Monsanto’s innovations as essential to the agricultural revolution in Africa to which his charitable foundation is committed. Josette Sheeran, the head of the United Nations World Food Programme, is also a fan.

Monsanto has come a long way from its roots in pharmaceuticals and chemicals (in which capacity it made Agent Orange). The original company was formed in 1901 to make saccharine. In 2000 it merged with Pharmacia & Upjohn, a drugmaker. Two years later the group’s agricultural activities were spun off into a new Monsanto. At that time the company was best known for Roundup, a herbicide popular with farmers. Roundup is still a leading brand, but margins have been eroded by competition from Chinese producers of other forms of glyphosate weedkiller. Roundup’s share of Monsanto’s revenue is shrinking towards 10%. There is talk that it might be sold. “It is no sacred cow. We look at it every year,” says Mr Grant.

Today most of Monsanto’s $11.7 billion of annual sales come from seeds, increasingly of genetically modified (GM), or transgenic, varieties (see chart), and from licensing genetic traits. Indeed, it is now best known, for better or worse, for applying biotechnology to seed production, winning a string of the sort of patents on living organisms that became legal in America only after a Supreme Court decision in 1980. In July it gave its GM seed a new master brand: Genuity, a name that evokes “being genuine, authentic and original”, according to a company spokesman. It will denote a “family of innovative products that will enable farmers to do what they do best, even better.”

In the 13 years since GM seed was first farmed commercially, agriculture—and Monsanto with it—has become increasingly central to several of the world’s most pressing policy debates, says Mr Grant, a Scot who joined the company in 1981. Nowadays he spends a good deal of his time taking part in those debates, which range from concerns about higher prices and shortages of supply to the use of land for growing biofuels rather than food, climate change and water. Arguments over water, thinks Mr Grant, “will dwarf the discussion that has taken place so far over food.” Monsanto is also getting caught up in the debate over intellectual-property rights in food and their implications for antitrust policy, on which Barack Obama’s administration sounds less friendly than that of George Bush. It has already marked agriculture for attention.

How successful Monsanto and rival makers of GM seed, such as DuPont and Syngenta, are in winning round a sceptical public and policymakers will play a big part in determining how lucrative their innovations prove to be. In public attitudes to GM food, Mr Grant believes “there’s been progress everywhere compared with 15 years ago.” Still, Europe remains “slow, a real slouch. European farmers have been denied the right to choose.” Although the European Union is slowly becoming open to imports of GM food, it is still largely opposed to growing the stuff. Monsanto has still to complete a test of any GM seed in Britain because protesters have destroyed its experiments. In Latin America, by contrast, Argentina and Brazil are both growing GM corn (maize) and soyabeans. In some ways, rising awareness of the food crisis has helped people to see “GM as something with potential benefits other than just boosting the profits of Big Food,” says Mr Grant—to Monsanto’s benefit. Well, maybe.
Turbo-charging Mendel

Monsanto’s innovations fall into two categories. The first is breeding, which seedmakers have been doing with increasing sophistication for decades. Monsanto is able to accelerate the process of selective breeding through better mapping of a seed’s genetic qualities and its suitability to grow in a particular place.

At Monsanto’s research laboratory in St Louis, the company’s home city, farmers on one of the many tours that are part of its marketing efforts are clearly fascinated by a piece of technology known as the corn chipper. A machine picks up an individual seed, rotates it to the right position, then chips off a sample, which has its genetic material analysed. (Getting the seed in the right position is the hardest step, because each one has a different shape and it is crucial that the chipper does not damage the embryo and thus stop the seed from growing properly.) The likely attributes of the plant that would grow from each seed are predicted from its DNA, the most promising seeds are planted, and the process is repeated with the seeds that those plants go on to produce.

The tour guide refers to the operation as “CSI: St Louis”, although testing now goes on all year, at centres around the world. In the past three years this technology has helped speed up dramatically Monsanto’s ability to identify and grow the most productive seed for any given location. “It is the mother and father of all dating agencies: we can analyse every single seed we harvest, do a health check, guess what its grandchildren will be like, send it anywhere in the world,” says Mr Grant.

The second category of innovation, in which Monsanto is becoming increasingly adventurous, is genetic modification: identifying genetic traits with particular qualities and transplanting those traits into seeds to improve their performance. In essence, the goal is to pack as much technology into a seed as possible.

The biggest breakthroughs so far have been in weed and bug control. Perhaps the most common feature of Monsanto’s range of seeds is that they are Roundup Ready, meaning that they are guaranteed to survive spraying with Roundup that will take out any surrounding weeds. Some plants have been bioengineered to deter pests from eating their leaves and roots, which reduces or even eliminates the need for insecticides. Farmers on their tours cannot fail to miss the display cases in which a healthy Monsanto plant grows next to a seriously ailing traditional specimen of the same variety.

Monsanto has just launched two new varieties of seed that have been engineered to be far more productive: Genuity SmartStax corn, which company trials suggest can increase yields by 5-10%; and Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield soyabeans, which in trials have shown yields 7-11% higher than the first generation of Roundup Ready soyabeans. Over the past couple of decades, soyabean yields have risen at an annual rate of barely 1%.

In around 2012 or 2013 Monsanto expects to launch a soyabean whose processing will result in fewer transfats. It will also offer an “omega-3 soyabean”, genetically enhanced to give consumers the many proven health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids. Until now, omega-3 has been harvested from fish and so, in Mr Grant’s words, “products with omega-3 in them taste a bit fishy.” Fish derive omega-3 from algae, so Monsanto has done likewise, extracting the relevant genetic material from the algae and putting it into soyabeans. Now, he says, without the fishy taste, omega-3 will go well in yogurts, health bars and so forth.

The company is also aiming to engineer seed to use nitrogen more efficiently—and hence to require less fertiliser. This would reduce farmers’ exposure to the price of oil, from which fertilisers are made, and the damage done when nitrogen leaches into the water supply.

In about three years’ time Monsanto expects to launch its first “drought tolerant” products. It is examining several ways of making plants more tolerant of drought. One is to improve the roots’ take-up of water. Another is to reduce water loss through the leaves. A third is to alter plants’ reaction to lack of water. When stressed, a plant shuts down growth in order to conserve what it has. They often over-react, and use a lot of energy when they restart. Genetic modification can help it interpret water conditions more accurately and avoid unnecessary stops and starts.

Because water shortages are predicted for many parts of the world, Monsanto expects these drought-tolerant plants to be a huge commercial success. The first of them will be corn, intended for a dry strip of America running from northern Texas to the Dakotas. Drought-tolerant technology has also prompted Monsanto to start focusing on dry-land wheat. Wheat acres have declined in recent years, contributing to shortages. In July the company paid $45m for WestBred, a wheat-seed firm.
Trust and antitrust

Acquisitions have been a key part of Monsanto’s strategy, giving it access to new seed markets. In 2005, it began to apply biotech to vegetables after buying Seminis, the world’s largest vegetable-seed company, for $1.4 billion. Since it was spun off, Monsanto has made more than 20 acquisitions (as well as several disposals). Those purchases are one reason why it was singled out as an appropriate target for the antitrust authorities in a paper published in October by the American Antitrust Institute, an independent competition watchdog. The paper laments the “impaired state of competition in transgenic seed”—which it blames on Monsanto above all.

The company’s acquisitions have been crucial in creating the horizontal and vertical integration that support its platforms in cotton, corn and soyabeans. Last year its share of the markets for GM corn and soyabeans was about 65% and that for GM cotton about 45%. The institute’s paper argues that, thanks to its dominance, Monsanto is actually harming innovation in seed. Monsanto had to make concessions to win the antitrust authorities’ approval for two of its biggest purchases, of DeKalb in 1998 and of Delta and Pine Land in 2007.
eyevine The next generation in the greenhouse

True, for the past 13 years Monsanto has been licensing its technology broadly, to hundreds of firms, including some of its main competitors. This, the paper concedes, has ensured that Monsanto has not ended up in “control of large, totally closed platforms in transgenic seed that could be challenged only by the unlikely emergence of rival platforms.” However, it cites Monsanto’s reputation for defending its intellectual property fiercely through the courts as another reason why the antitrust authorities should take a look at the firm.

Monsanto’s terms of business require farmers to buy fresh seed every year. Its new Violator Exclusion Policy denies farmers who break the terms of its licences access to all its technology for ever. This summer it achieved its latest success in enforcing its stern line when it won a case against some Canadian farmers who had held on to seed.

Agricultural markets have been mentioned as an area under review by officials in the antitrust division of the Department of Justice. The DoJ is expected to make Google its main target, but it will be no surprise if Monsanto comes a close second. Already, the DoJ is looking into complaints by DuPont, perhaps Monsanto’s fiercest rival. In May Monsanto sued DuPont, alleging that Pioneer, DuPont’s seed arm, had broken licensing terms for herbicide-resistant technology in corn and soyabeans. After an ugly war of words, DuPont countersued and complained to the DoJ.

“We are in a hyper-competitive business. Farmers have no shortage of choice,” insists the unapologetic Mr Grant. “Our goal is to be competitive every spring at the farmer’s table. A farmer may be willing to abdicate the decision on what chemicals to use, but not on what seed to plant. We aim to win one field at a time, one spring at a time.” Enforcing licences is crucial to that strategy. Just as in the drug industry, innovation is expensive: Monsanto has a research and development budget of nearly $1 billion a year, and reckons it costs $100m to bring a new GM seed to market. If there is to be innovation, the firm insists, intellectual property must be protected.

However, Monsanto is using different language—and a different approach from that of big drugmakers—when it comes to dealing with the millions of poor people in Africa. Mr Grant says that he is determined not to repeat the mistakes of the pharmaceutical industry in holding back on making valuable innovations available to the developing world. He believes that “in a perfect world, on the same day you launch [a drought-resistant seed] in Kansas, you would launch it similarly in Nairobi”—although in practice Africa and other poor places that are short of water will have to wait a while longer.

Over the past three years, the firm has started to play a leading role in efforts collectively described as an attempt to create a “green revolution in Africa”. Mr Grant talks enthusiastically about his friendship with Norman Borlaug, the driving force behind the Green Revolution, first in Mexico, then in Asia, in the second half of the past century, which is generally reckoned to have saved at least 1 billion lives. Shortly before his death this year, aged 95, Borlaug reportedly expressed regret that he would not live to see the “gene revolution”.

In white corn, a staple in Africa and Mexico, Monsanto has donated all its intellectual property, seed and know-how for developing drought-tolerant genes to Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA), a public-private partnership that has received grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the foundation of Howard Buffett, an Illinois farmer (and son of Warren Buffett). The five countries to benefit are Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. Mr Grant expects to launch drought-tolerant corn in Africa within two or three years of the launch in America. The company is also working with Millennium Villages, an anti-poverty project led by Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University.
Big Pharma versus Big Farma

In contrast to the anti-retroviral drugs that pharmaceutical companies sell in Africa, this product will generate no royalties for Monsanto, says Mr Grant. “The buzzword is the ‘democratisation of technology’ and we have learnt from Big Pharma the dangers of being too slow,” says Mr Grant. The fact that seeds suited to one place do not necessarily grow well elsewhere greatly reduces the risk of parallel imports that affected the drugmakers. They feared that drugs given away in Africa would be shipped back to rich countries, undermining their business there.

That said, he does not believe that Monsanto could or should be expected to solve this problem on its own. “We studied what Borlaug did, which was work with local NGOs, tapped research institutes, brought disparate groups together. The new piece today is getting big companies involved, which hopefully means we can get this done much faster than Borlaug did.”

Mr Grant nonetheless regards this approach as “good business”, not least because the developing world will be a huge source of future growth for the firm. Monsanto sells more GM cotton in India than in America. Already, most of the countries where GM seed is sown are emerging ones. Around 90% of the world’s 12m farmers with at least a hectare planted with GM seed are smallholders in developing countries. America has 250,000-300,000 active farmers; India has 15m cotton farmers alone, several million of whom Monsanto says it has reached already.

This reinforces the firm’s fundamental message, that it is a driving force for higher farm productivity—and that higher productivity, not a return to the methods of the past, is likely to be the true source of agricultural sustainability. In America, GM seed has already brought about huge increases in productivity, says Mr Grant. He has no time for the “Malthusian thing about running out of food. This is eminently solvable.” He sees huge potential in merely raising yields in the rest of the world to levels already achieved in America thanks to better farming practices, Roundup and improved seed productivity. American farmers average about 160 bushels (of 56lb, or 25.5kg) of corn per acre per year, against 60 in Brazil and 27 in sub-Saharan Africa (22 excluding South Africa).

Moreover, even in America there is the potential to double yields again. Already, farmers in Iowa are producing as many as 200 bushels an acre. Mr Grant believes that 300 bushels are achievable by 2030. “We have just scratched the surface,” he says, pointing out that after the first GM crops came on the market in 1996, it took ten years for 1 billion acres to be planted. But the second billion took only another three years. “We are where transistors were in the 1970s.”

Organic food is out of fashion. Welcome genetic modify food with enhanced nutrition. Artificial gotta be better than the natural product, otherwise where is the value add of human?

Sep 24th 2009 – The Economist
The popularity of “natural” food spawns an unnatural response

OVER the past decade, the biggest trend in food marketing has been the shift towards organic, “natural” and even “whole” foods. Consumers in wealthier markets worldwide have demanded foods with minimal processing, in a state as close as possible to their natural one, in the fervent (and often mistaken) belief that such food is healthier for their bodies and for the planet. Ironically, this success is now prompting multinational food giants to accelerate investments in “functional” foods that are intentionally modified to make them healthier or more nutritious.

Consumers are swallowing such products, and the marketing claims that come with them, enthusiastically. PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, expects the global market for functional foods to mushroom from $78 billion in 2007 to $128 billion in 2013. One example of this approach is the enrichment of eggs with omega-3 fatty acids to combat hypertension. Another is the addition of chemicals called sterols to margarines to impede the absorption of cholesterol. The best example is the recent boom in bacteria-enriched yogurts, such as Danone’s blockbuster brand Activia, which are supposed to fight “bloating” (code for constipation).

Functional foods are nothing new, observes Bernard Hours of Danone. He says that his firm, a French dairy giant, was selling yogurt in pharmacies in Barcelona as long ago as 1919. Public-health campaigners have long added vitamin B to flour to fight pellagra and vitamin D to milk to defeat rickets. Adding iodine to salt has also helped in the battle against goitre.

The modern craze for functional foods began much more recently—and it started in Asia, not Europe. Long before Activia came Yakult, a bioactive yogurt-like drink from Japan that is now available worldwide. Encouraged by a government keen to improve public health, Japanese manufacturers have long tinkered with packaged foods to allow them to make health claims. On average, the Japanese spend twice as much per person on functional foods as Americans and nearly three times as much as Europeans. When Coca-Cola wanted to experiment with a supposedly healthy green-tea-flavoured drink, it targeted young Japanese women first.

The trend is now spreading most rapidly in America. Firms selling everything from energy drinks to breakfast foods to artificial sweeteners (Splenda now comes with added fibre) are rushing to add miracle ingredients to their wares in the hope that the supposed benefits will entice customers. A number of rival food giants have even banded together into a coalition (dubbed “Smart Choices”) to agree on common labelling and advertising standards for functional foods.

All this sounds impressive, but there are two factors that could yet trip things up: consumer scepticism and regulatory disapproval. There is reason to think that punters are growing wary of the notion that they can eat their way to fighting fitness. Earlier this year, Coca-Cola was sued by a consumer group over health claims made for its Vitamin Water brand. Danone also faced a similar class-action lawsuit over its yogurts. On September 18th the firm settled that case, admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to set up a $35m fund to reimburse unhappy yogurt-eaters.

The over-exuberance of some marketers has also irked regulators. When Cheerios, a popular cereal brand owned by General Mills, tried earlier this year to claim on its box that it was “clinically proven to reduce cholesterol”, America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided that it had gone too far. More recently, the decision by the Smart Choices coalition to endorse sugary cereals such as Froot Loops has attracted criticism. On September 21st an American Congresswoman, Rosa DeLauro, sent an angry letter to the FDA demanding an investigation to see whether unhealthy products were being “misbranded”. If the only real function behind such labels is to bolster profits, consumers and regulators will eventually see through the hype.

After having the ice-cream, we are still hungry, so we decided to have dinner together.  I want to bring Vikram to a restaurant that he don’t have one in India.  One of my friend suggested all you can eat Chinese hot-pot, what a good idea.  So I took them to the hot-pot restaurant I usually go.  As you know, in a hot-pot place, other than ordering the soup base and dishes, you have to order your dipping sauce.  In the menu, they have the normal sauces and the house special spicy sauce.  My Indian friend instinctly want to have the spicy sauce and my two other friends, one is a white guy and the other is also Indian but grew up in Canada, follows. When we made the ordered, the waitress warned the white guy the spicy sauce is really hot.  My friend complained that the waitress discriminate against white guys because she didn’t warn my other two Indian friends.  He ignored the warning and told her to bring it on.  My Indian friends almost made fun of the stereotype that white guys can’t take spicy food.

After a while, the hotpot, the dishes and the spicy sauce came.  The white guy first tried the sauce.  The moment he put the sauce into his month, he drank the whole glass of ice water to chill the heat.  The sauce is too spicy for him.  My two Indian friends were laughing at him.  Then the Indian guy grew up in Canada try the sauce.  He got the same reaction and complains his tongue is burning.  The real Indian guy laughed at him saying that he has no taste for the spice.  Finally, it’s my Indian friend’s turn to try the spicy sauce.  Guess what, the sauce is too hot for him!  You know when it is really hot, if an Indian thinks the spice too hot.

On a second thought, the organic label is quite misleading. Strictly speaking in the language of Chemistry, all food is organic. Unless something is made of metal or rocks, by definition it is organic, even it is made of plastic. If there are organic food, then there must also be inorganic food. But that would be very odd to say some food is inorganic. Is inorganic food eatable at all?

According to anthropologist, eating meat and cooking food is what make us human as human. Human evolve to the top of the food chain and set us apart from other animals all thanks to meat and cooked food. Herbivores diet cannot supply the extra calories required to develop the brain of our prehistoric ancestors. Eating meat allow human to have huge brain with small guts that jump start human intelligence. Cooking breaks down starch molecules into more digestible fragment, break down amino-acid chain in protein molecules for the digestive enzymes and physically soften the food. Eating cooked food is more calories efficient, so human can further divert more energy for brain development. If human intelligence originates from eating meat and cooked food, then not eating meat or cooked food must be the lack of intelligence. Vegetarian, Jainism and raw foodist defy our human identify and evolutionary advantage. Their beliefs is on the verge of a dangerous path that lead us devolve back to animals.

今天去探朋友一歲大的BB女﹐我朋友的髮線很明顯在節節敗退。還記得早兩年我做他結婚的兄弟時﹐他雖然不算多頭髮﹐但還未稀疏到頭肉清析可見。一歲大的BB最好玩﹐剛剛開始懂爬行﹐又不怕陌生人。BB年紀太細像一團飯沒有反應﹐年紀太大又頑皮不聽話。BB女生了八隻BB牙﹐可以除了吃奶外﹐還吃些固體食物。BB媽媽見BB扭計想吃東西﹐便給她吃一塊Baby Mum-Mum米餅。Baby Mum-Mum在加拿大很受母親們歡迎﹐是標榜健康的新一代BB零食。

我留意到包裝上一樣有趣的東西﹐Baby Mum-Mum是Hot-Kid公司出品﹐而包裝上Hot-Kid的商標很面善。相信大部份香港長大的朋友﹐一定吃過Hot-Kid出品的零食﹐大家估不估到這是什麼零食呢﹖ 說穿了在加拿大流行的Baby Mum-Mum﹐原來就是我們熟悉的旺旺仙貝。我見BB吃米餅吃得這樣開心﹐我也要了一塊來試試。Baby Mum-Mum口感與旺旺差不多﹐依然是鬆脆可口的米餅﹐但品道很清淡沒有味精粉﹐大慨是因為要照顧BB的腸胃。很奇怪BB的父母竟然不知道Baby Mum-Mum原來就是旺旺﹐他們聽了其他父母推介看見滿盒全部英文的包裝﹐理所當然以為Baby Mum-Mum是鬼佬產品。可是他們兩個也在香港長大﹐從小孩子年代開始已經在吃旺旺啊﹗

說起全球化﹐我們總是想到西方產品侵佔發展中國家的市場﹐趕盡殺絕當地的小商戶。又或者西方公司到中國設廠﹐以低廉的工資剝削中國工人﹐再把血汗工廠的商品運回祖國。其實全球化並不是一面倒西方佔便宜﹐全球化同時也為發展中國家的商戶﹐打開通往西方國家市場的大門﹐旺旺便是最好的例子。在香港旺旺仙貝只是低價零食﹐但經過改頭換面重新包裝後﹐搖身一變成為健康食品新貴﹐父母們趨之若鶩的BB零食。說起來旺旺也有在香港聯交所上市(0151)﹐相信應該會是一隻佷有升值潛力的股票。唯一擔心是中國食品安全的問題﹐始終旺旺的工廠設在大陸。若果不幸發生食物源料受到污染的醜聞﹐恐怕重注BB健康的西方父母會立即把Baby Mum-Mum例入黑名單。

Nowadays, even fruit come with a user manual. I went to grocery shopping at Superstores and come across a weird looking fruit, Pomegranate. It is red in color, in the shape of an onion, looks like a decoration ball on a X’mas tree. I have no idea what it is, how it tastes or even how to eat it. To my surprise, the fruit come with a user manual. The food producer printed a nice pamphlet answering all my questions and place them next to the fruit. From the pamphlet, I know pomegranate suppose to be very healthy, it has lots of antioxidants and Vitamin C. There are illustrations in the pamphlet show me how to eat a pomegranate step by step. You are not actually eating the fruit, you are eating the seeds inside fruit. After you cut open the pomegranate, you have to loose the arils (seeds) from the membrane attached to the skin and then pour the arils through a strainer to remove any remaining liquid. We bought one home, but I don’t know it taste yet. I am waiting for Pat to open a pomegranate. I would never buy one if there is no user manual. I feel more comfortable trying new things if I can read some related information first. Maybe all odd looking fruits in the supermarket should have a user manual too, so I know what to try.

Somehow, some colleagues choose to cook for themselves in the guest house instead of joining us.  I don’t quite understand why don’t they come with us.  Granted, the restaurants are far away, it takes time to stuck in traffic.  However, buying glocery, washing and cooking also takes time.  Having a nice dinner doesn’t take much time than cooking.  Money is not a concern, the food bill is paid by the companies anyways.  There is no reason to go cheap on food by making your own dinner.  I just can’t imagine someone can have sausage and egg every day instead of fine dinner.  One theory why they stay home for dinner is they feel guilt spending company’s money.  I tried to enlighten them with the correct value of money.  The company outsource to India to cut cost, so we are just helping the company utilize some of saving by having nice dinner in India.