April 7, 2017
CapitalPress.com
7
Monsanto’s vegetable seed lab
makes end user its first priority
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
WOODLAND, Calif. —
Scientists at Monsanto’s veg-
etable seed research and de-
velopment lab say everything
they do is geared toward pro-
viding a pleasant experience
for the consumer who buys
the end product at the grocery
store.
And consumer preferences
vary from country to country
and culture to culture, said
John Purcell, the company’s
R&D and Hawaii business
lead.
The company takes hun-
dreds of thousands of differ-
ent seeds found in nature and
combines high-tech equipment
with greenhouse know-how
to breed seeds for more than
2,000 varieties of vegetables.
Its scientists plant the seeds
in trial plots worldwide and
conduct taste tests before in-
troducing a new seed variety
to the marketplace.
“Somebody has to walk
into the grocery store and say,
‘I want that onion,’” Purcell
told reporters during a tour
of his lab on March 28. “It’s
not about the technology. It’s
about technology that means
something to somebody in the
marketplace.”
The focus on the end user
makes the Woodland facility
somewhat unique within Mon-
santo, whose other products are
geared toward helping farmers
sustain their operations, Pur-
cell said. While corn and wheat
production tends to focus on
yields, the vegetable grower
must meet customers’ specific
tastes and demands. And those
vary widely, making it neces-
sary to grow numerous variet-
ies of a single vegetable.
Established in 1972, the
more than 200-acre facility
produces seeds for multiple
varieties of tomatoes, peppers,
eggplants, leafy greens, carrots
and other vegetables. The lab
employs more than 300 full-
time workers as well as sea-
sonal laborers in its farm fields,
greenhouses, seed library and
genetics lab.
While the lab’s work centers
around finding the right genetic
markers for desirable traits such
as disease resistance, flavor and
appearance and breeding plants
for those traits, none of the
seeds are genetically modified,
company officials said.
For one thing, trying to
introduce GMO vegetables
wouldn’t be worth the cost, said
Mark Oppenhuizen, who man-
ages vegetable R&D strategy
and operations at the lab. The
Lucien Gunderman, a farmer in Oregon’s Yamhill County, speaks
about a conservation easement that protects his land from devel-
opment in perpetuity.
Farmland protection fund
criticized as unaffordable
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Chow-Ming Lee, consumer sensory lead at Monsanto’s research and development lab in Woodland,
Calif., demonstrates to reporters how he conducts taste tests of tomatoes, onions and other produce
grown with the company’s seeds.
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Mark Oppenhuizen, who
manages vegetable research
and development strategy and
operations at Monsanto’s lab
in Woodland, Calif., discusses
different seed varieties at the
lab’s “seed library” on
March 28.
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Melon breeder Jeff Mills discusses his work in the greenhouse at
Monsanto’s research and development lab in Woodland, Calif. The
seed company gears everything toward providing a good experi-
ence for consumers who buy the product in grocery stores.
regulatory and development
process for each new GMO
variety would cost about $100
million, and the vegetable divi-
sion only generates about $800
million in annual sales — a
small portion of the company’s
roughly $15 billion in returns.
There are about 3 million
acres of vegetables grown
worldwide, compared to about
90 million acres of corn, Op-
penhuizen told the Capital
Press.
Further, more than half of
Monsanto’s vegetable seed
sales are in Europe, which
heavily regulates GMO prod-
ucts, Purcell said.
Instead, the facility’s green-
houses and genetic labs enable
Monsanto to rapidly accelerate
the natural breeding process.
For instance, the lab can grow
three generations of melon
plants in a year, and it sends its
hybrid seeds to numerous field
trials to mimic farms’ unique
conditions and characteristics.
“The environment makes all
the difference,” melon breeder
Jeff Mills said.
As such, the target is always
moving.
“There is no perfect melon,”
Mills said.
The day-long laboratory
tour was the latest in Monsan-
to’s stepped-up outreach efforts
in recent years to counter neg-
ative public perceptions about
the company, fueled by GMO
controversies and the compa-
ny’s attempt to buy rival Syn-
genta.
Last year, journalists toured
Monsanto’s Chesterfield Vil-
lage Research Facility outside
St. Louis as part of a “Food,
From Farm to Table” fellow-
ship hosted by the National
Press Foundation.
The efforts come as regula-
tors in the U.S. and Europe are
considering Monsanto’s $57
billion acquisition by Bayer,
the German pharmaceutical
company. Reviews of the ac-
quisition are expected to take
until the end of this year, Pur-
cell said.
Purcell noted that the di-
vide between farmers and con-
sumers has widened, and he
acknowledged that Monsanto
hadn’t spent much time talking
to consumers before the out-
reach effort.
“We were talking to our
customers. We were talking to
people in ag,” he said. “We
have got to find a bridge. We
have got to talk to people
about where their food comes
from.”
Longtime Capital Press salesman retires after 29 years
McMorris sold
door-to-door,
at trade shows
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
SPOKANE — Wayne Mc-
Morris says he’s a farm boy to
the core.
“I’ve always been an agri-
culture guy,” he said. “I didn’t
play sports in high school
because I wanted to go home
and be on the farm. I’m truly
a farm boy.”
He translated that love of
farming into a part-time sub-
scription sales job with the
Capital Press that spanned
nearly three decades and took
him around the West. McMor-
ris, 79, recently retired after
29 years of representing the
Capital Press. At first he sold
subscriptions door-to-door,
then he represented the news-
paper at agricultural shows.
For many readers, he was
the face of the Capital Press.
He grew up on a farm near
Salem, Ore.
“My dad got the Capital
Press when I was a kid,” he
said. “I’ve read the Capital
Press since I was 10 or 12
years old.”
Out of high school, Mc-
Morris began raising cherries.
He moved to British Colum-
bia from 1975 to 1985, then
bought an orchard in Kettle
Falls, Wash.
He started selling the Cap-
ital Press part-time in 1988,
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Wayne McMorris, retiring
Capital Press salesman, stands
outside the Sinto Senior Activity
Center in Spokane on March
28. McMorris sold the agricul-
ture newspaper part-time for 29
years throughout the West.
after renewing his subscrip-
tion at a horticulture show in
Wenatchee, Wash.
“A part-time job in the win-
tertime,” McMorris said. “It
worked out wonderful for me.”
McMorris started selling
door-to-door throughout East-
ern Washington and Northern
Idaho.
“I covered every back road
everybody could think of,” he
said.
McMorris moved to Spo-
kane in 2000 and shifted from
selling door-to-door to trade
shows. He estimates he sold
the Capital Press at 47 different
shows through the years — a
total of roughly 800 days of
shows.
At trade shows, McMorris
would also give samples of
the newspaper to all the oth-
er vendors.
“When I worked at Cap-
ital Press, I worked like I
owned the company — that’s
what I would do if I owned
the company,” he said.
He also sold the newspa-
per at auctions around the
region.
McMorris said he loved
the chance to talk with farm-
ers and see the scenery of
California, Idaho, Oregon,
Washington, Montana, Ne-
vada and Utah.
“I’m the type of guy that
I don’t remember sports
scores, I remember the
scenes,” he said.
He decided to retire for
health reasons. He will re-
main active in Spokane,
as president of the Sin-
to Senior Activity Center
board.
He will also spend time
with his family, son Jeff,
daughter Cathy — U.S. Rep.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers —
and seven grandchildren.
He said he will miss the
people he looked forward to
seeing each year. And he’ll
still read a certain agricul-
ture newspaper.
“I loved selling it because
it’s a good product and I be-
lieved in it,” he said.
SALEM — A proposed
fund dedicated to protecting
farmland from development
in Oregon has come under fire
from critics who say the state
government can’t afford it.
The Oregon Agricultur-
al Heritage Fund would buy
easements from farmers that
limit their ability to develop
property, thus preserving the
land for agricultural produc-
tion.
Organizations that “hold”
easements by enforcing such
constraints, such as land trusts,
would also receive money and
technical assistance from the
fund, as would farmers who
need help with succession
planning.
Investment
decisions
would be made by a 12-person
commission under House Bill
3249, which creates the fund
without directing a specific
amount of state dollars to it.
Kelley Beamer, executive
director of the Coalition of
Oregon Land Trusts, said the
new fund is needed because
roughly two-thirds of Ore-
gon’s farmland is expected to
change ownership in the next
decade, but about 80 percent
of the landowners don’t have a
plan for the transition.
“We do see conversion and
fragmentation as a real threat
to those values we have as a
state,” she said during an April
4 legislative hearing.
However, critics argue that
Oregon’s projected $1.6 bil-
lion budget deficit in the 2017-
2019 biennium precludes a
new program aimed at helping
agriculture, which already re-
ceives much government sup-
port.
Farmers already benefit
from property tax breaks, in-
heritance tax exemptions and
other programs that will add
up to about $550 million in
the next biennium, said Ger-
ritt Rosenthal of Tax Fairness
Oregon, a group that seeks to
preserve government revenues
from tax breaks.
“In this time of budget
shortfall, it’s not the time to
create new programs that may
cost significant amounts of
money,” he said.
The fund would primari-
ly serve farming interests by
spending public dollars, even
though Oregon’s protections
for agricultural water quality
are insufficient, said Jim My-
ron, a natural resources con-
sultant testifying on behalf of
several environmental groups.
“While there may be posi-
tive aspects to the bill, it isn’t
ready for prime time yet,” My-
ron said.
Proponents of HB 3249
claim the fund is a wise invest-
ment because state dollars will
be matched by contributions
from the federal government,
conservation groups and the
farmers.
$785,000 added to
judgment against Heinz
Bright Harvest
Sweet Potato Co.
entitled to attorney
fees, judge rules
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A federal judge has tacked
on $785,000 in attorney fees
and costs to a $1.2 million
judgment against the H.J.
Heinz Co. in a lawsuit over
sweet potato processing.
The Bright Harvest Sweet
Potato Co. filed a complaint
in 2013 accusing Heinz of
breaking a deal to buy sweet
potato fries and instead pro-
ducing them itself at a newly
constructed facility in Ontar-
io, Ore.
Heinz initially convinced a
jury that it hadn’t violated the
contract with Bright Harvest,
but U.S. District Judge Lynn
Winmill ordered a new trial
after overturning the first ver-
dict for not being supported
by the evidence.
The second jury found
in favor of Bright Harvest,
awarding the company $1.2
million in damages, which
Winmill upheld last year.
The judge has now de-
cided that under Idaho law,
which governs the contract,
Bright Harvest is entitled to
more than $785,000 in attor-
ney fees and costs because
it’s clearly the “prevailing
party” in the dispute.
Even though Bright Har-
vest didn’t recover the total
amount sought in its lawsuit
— the company asked for
nearly $11 million during
settlement talks — the $1.2
million judgment is “signif-
icant enough” to establish it
as the prevailing party, Win-
mill said.
The judge also ruled
the attorney fees sought by
Bright Harvest were rea-
sonable for the most part,
though he refused to in-
clude nearly $11,000 in fees
sought by one attorney who
was a “possible fact wit-
ness” rather serving on the
litigation team.
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