October 19, 2007

 

Monsanto CEO: African countries need partnerships, development

 

 

African countries will never solve their hunger crisis unless they build a proper framework that allows them to tap their commercial potential, the top executive at seed giant Monsanto said Thursday (October 18).

 

"Africa has gone backward," said Hugh Grant, the president and CEO of Monsanto Company. "It has retreated."

 

Investors need to acknowledge their cultural and societal responsibilities on the continent, Grant said. But the best way forward for all parties involved is through well thought out partnerships and development, he said.

 

"I don't have all of the answers. But this is an area that's ripe for commercial investment ... for partnership," he said.

 

"We can build these better partnerships ... and we can save this region. There is an urgency here and I think that with this concentration of brain power, we can do it. I hope that in Africa we can build a regulatory framework, but until that step is made it will fall behind."

 

Grant spoke during the morning keynote address of Norman E. Borlaug Symposium in Des Moines. The two-day event is part of a weeklong celebration of the World Food Prize, which will be awarded Thursday night to Dr. Philip Nelson of Purdue University.

 

Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for research that inspired the so-called "Green Revolution," founded the World Food Prize in 1986 and has remained a key part of the annual celebration of combating global hunger.

 

Addressing the symposium Thursday morning, Borlaug stressed the power of optimism in fighting hunger.

 

"Let's not get carried away by the doomsayers," he said. "These people, most of them, have never been close to hunger."

 

He added, "I can't be despondent. I have to be an optimist. Pessimism is a poor ingredient to expand and address the needs of humans throughout the world. Let's never forget that."

 

Borlaug said one way forward was an increased emphasis on education. He said that many impoverished areas, including Africa, faced a more daunting situation because they did not have the educational opportunities of the western world.

 

"To me, the basis of our future progress is education. Many of these areas, they've been left behind on the education front," he said.

 

Grant, whose company employs more than 17,000 people worldwide, focused on Monsanto's work in Africa and said that businesses had a role to play in helping the world stop hunger. His company's efforts in Malawi, a southeast African country, where Monsanto has donated millions of dollars in grain and feed, offered a template, he said.

 

"It was a lesson in working together," he said of the company's efforts. "The sceptics would say it means nothing to (Monsanto). But it does. Corn does, and corn is at the heart of this."

 

Africa can solve its hunger issues and become a modern commercial force if it is cultivated properly, he said. He emphasized that partnerships were the only way to accomplish that goal.

 

"These relationships, that fluffy stuff, it's the key to doing it," he said.