Former Monsanto CTO on Local Farming
Robb Fraley Ph.D. is the former CTO of the agriculture seed and chemical company Monsanto. Retired after the purchase of Monsanto by Bayer, Fraley spoke freely about his view from running the most important ag biotech company in the history of the world.
We discuss the time a vaccine would need to be tested before it was safe, the labor shortages that threaten our food supply and the role of patents and IP when trying to find a cure for Coronavirus. Checkout the full interview here.
VC: You’ve been a person that has been able to see the future and act on it, make investments into biotech, into scientists where the results of their work isn’t going to play out for years. What right now do you think with the with the wild impacts that coronavirus is having on the economy do you think is going to change the most? — Where do you see the horizon looking different now that we’re in a we’re heading into a post corona world?
RF: Let me say first, the things that I think we need to reflect on. The first thing is, I go to the grocery store and it’s hard to find certain supplies, whether it’s toilet paper or hand sanitizers or alcohol, but so far we’ve been blessed in this country that the food supply is there so I can never take it for granted. One of the things that I want to put a little shout out for is everybody who is involved in the food production system. From the farmers and the processors to the folks involved in shipping and transportation to the folks who are stocking the shelves and at the checkout counter, they’ve been doing a wonderful job and you never want to take it for granted but one of the things that in general we haven’t worried about is the availability to food.
”So many people have contributed to supplying food for shelters and contributions and volunteers that I think we can look back and say one of the real strengths of this country and one of the real blessings is that we are a food secure country.”
Not only can we meet our own demands, but we ship food to countries around the world at a time like this and I’m glad that’s an industry that we haven’t outsourced.
VC: You and I have known each other for a long time and I know that when you and I were both going out and speaking you had always had a place where you said local matters and you’ve got to have these other versions like organic and the other means of production and to be totally honest Robb, I thought you were kind of patting people on the head about that. I thought you were the head of the large corporation that had to kind of pat the other system on the head to be like ‘oh that’s a nice thing’ but now in corona-virus — I am shocked awake to the idea that we need a variety of food systems. You need people that are producing on the local level so that you can have ways of getting chicken and beef and fresh vegetables that are outside of the traditional system. When we apply the pressure by not having restaurants or not having nearly as many other outlets, we usually have available, I was very shocked by how much my belief in efficiency at all costs was really pretty wrong. Do you feel that sense now that you’re watching how the food system is changing?
RF: I mean it’s been very resilient. I agree with you 100%. I think as I’ve always said, I start from the consumer and what our role is, I think the food production system must meet that demand that the consumer has. In this country, we have a variety of consumer interests, we have a variety of production systems, we have a variety of both cropping animal products that fill our shelves and our food supply.
“I absolutely believe that that’s a strength of our country — to be able to have that kind of local production.”
Different technologies and different paths to production I think all complement the bigger picture. I think that’s the great thing about local production. Of course, it does provide that resilience you’re talking about also, I think it gets more and more people engaged in what is truly a vital industry. In this country, less than 2% of the population is involved in agriculture, probably another 15 or 20 percent is involved in food processing and food production and delivery, so it’s still a very important part of our economy and it’s been very resilient. In addition to that I think the other thing I would hope for is that people realize that we have had a pandemic challenge like this almost every ten years. You can go back to SARS, you can go to MERS and now the you know COVID-19, nature is always going to throw changes and curveballs in terms of new pathogens and new pests and so for me, one of the things that I’m just so in awe of is how the advanced scientific tools — whether it’s the speed at which we can sequence a genome or the ability to rapidly identify the portion of that virus gene that can allow us to make the best antibodies or the best vaccines — that that is now literally done in days and weeks versus months or years just a bit ago. That investment in research ,whether it’s public sector research private sector research and frankly whether it’s in health care or dealing with crop pests or livestock diseases, is really an important investment and an insurance policy for us in the future knowing that we are inevitably going to be addressing these types of challenges in a global world. I hope one of the things that comes out of this is that we all understand and recognize the importance of the investment that this country and countries around the world make in the kind of basic research in science that gives us the capability to understand, respond and mitigate with the speed at which we can do today. I know we live in a world where everything is almost instantaneous and that’s really the expectation.
Let’s keep the conversation going,
Vance
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