November 28 - Monsanto spreads roots into modified produce

Monsanto Co., whose genetically modified corn and soybeans have reshaped America’s heartland and rallied a nation of fast-food foes, wants to revolutionize the produce aisle.

The agribusiness giant already has stepped quietly into the marketplace with produce grown from its seeds. Grocery customers are chopping its onions that produce fewer tears, stir-frying its broccoli that decreases cholesterol and biting into tiny orange tomatoes that last longer on the shelf. Soon, people will be thumping melons bred to be a single serving and shucking sweet corn genetically modified to enable farmers to spray the fields with the company’s weed killer, Roundup.

To do this, it’s marrying conventional breeding methods with its vast technological resources to bring about changes in fruits and vegetables in months or years, rather than in decades.

Monsanto’s goal: to dominate today’s $3 billion global market for produce seeds, much as it already has done with corn and soybeans.

“This isn’t a hobby. … We’re serious about it,” said Monsanto Chief Executive Hugh Grant, who expects the company’s vegetable-seed revenue to rival its $1.5 billion soybean business in the next decade.

The move has raised the hackles of some environmental and organic-farming groups that fear Monsanto ultimately will squeeze out smaller, independent vegetable-seed companies. They also worry that Monsanto will use technology to introduce revolutionary new genes into vegetable plants, just as its scientists have done in corn, soybeans and cotton.

The amount of arable land worldwide is dwindling, while the world’s population is forecast to jump to more than 9 billion by 2050 from 7 billion today. Shifts in weather patterns have caused recent slumps in key crops. Given these factors, Monsanto is making a multibillion-dollar bet that global farming conditions are going to get tougher, and farmers are going to clamor for their vegetable and fruit seeds.