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New Monsanto chief promises to deliver

Monsanto Co's new president and chief executive said Friday that the biotechnology and agricultural giant plans no retreat from its leadership role in the sharply debated arena of genetically modified crops.

"My mandate is simple: Deliver on the promise of Monsanto's technology," Hugh Grant, 45, told analysts a day after being announced as successor to Hendrik Verfaillie, who resigned in December after two years of lackluster financial performance.

"We know competition in the field of biotechnology is coming," said Grant, a 22-year Monsanto veteran who had spent the past three years as chief operating officer. "We're proud of our leadership in this area, but I can assure you we're not resting on our laurels."

Monsanto makes the world's top-selling herbicide, Roundup, along with genetically altered seeds -- corn, cotton, canola and soybeans -- that tolerate Roundup and resist insects. It also produces Asgrow, Hartz and DeKalb seeds.

But in expecting competition to Roundup "to continue in its fierceness," Grant again cast Monsanto as a transitioning company looking to continue becoming a "high-tech solutions provider" for farmers over the next three to five years.

"It's clear to everyone within the company that transition to seeds and [genetic] traits is fully upon us," Grant said. "Longer term, we're faced with unlocking the full potential of our technology globally.

"If you want to compete in agriculture today, you have to have a different strategic and operational focus than you had even a short five years ago."

Biotech crops are a growing proportion of American agriculture, despite critics' claims that such foods are harmful to consumers and the environment -- assertions that Monsanto rejects.

The Agriculture Department estimates 38 percent of the corn planted this year will be genetically engineered and 80 percent of soybeans will be a biotech variety.

US farmers like biotech crops because they require fewer chemicals for killing insects and weeds.

One variety, Monsanto's Round-up Ready, allows corn farmers to spray and kill weeds with the company's best-selling Roundup herbicide without killing the plant.

While American consumers generally seem to accept biotech foods, Europeans doubt their safety. An EU moratorium, of sorts, on US biotech imports has been in place for four years.

But earlier this month, the US filed a complaint with the WTO, arguing that Europeans are ignoring scientific studies showing that genetically modified foods do no harm.

US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said that if the moratorium isn't lifted, the US will ask the WTO form a panel to consider the complaint and resolve it.

Against that backdrop comes Grant, viewed by analysts as a global citizen -- native Scottish and European-educated, having once overseen Monsanto's agriculture, nutrition and pharmaceutical businesses in southeast Asia. Grant spent his first decade with Monsanto in various European sales, product-development and management roles.

"I think he understands the psychology of what's going on in Europe," Buckingham Research Group's John Roberts said. "He's one of them and one of us at the same time."

In 1998, Grant was named co-president of Monsanto's agricultural division, among other things crafting Monsanto's long-term business strategy that led to an integrated product portfolio of chemistry, seeds and biotechnology traits.
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