Dairy Leaders Trip to St. Louis and Washington DC

Part 1 – Biotechnology

 

By Simon Vander Woude

 

Our trip began with an early morning departure from Sacramento. We arrived in St. Louis that afternoon, and had about an hour to relax before dinner. Our host for dinner was Kevin Holloway, president of Monsanto Dairy Business. We were also were joined by Brian Lowery, who has had many titles in Monsanto, mostly in the legal department. Our dinner was at Cardwell’s, a very nice restaurant where we had a private room that enabled us to have some very casual discussions. Our conversations ranged from college football to milk labeling, and everything in between. We were grateful that Kevin and Brian took time from their busy schedules to host us for dinner.
 

The next morning began with a working breakfast at the hotel with Frank Plescia as our speaker. He is senior director of state and local government affairs for Monsanto, and he gave us an overview of the company and the challenges they face. He spoke of how it was decided many years ago to focus attention on agricultural biotechnology. His job includes keeping California in line, with many people that are aligned against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) who have tried to pass local and state ordinances banning the use, sale or growth of such products. The biotech industry has been able to beat most of these efforts, with help from many local farmers and ranchers. We also talked briefly about Monsanto’s future in PMP (pharmaceutical-making plants). They continue to monitor situations here in the United States and abroad, and they have learned to rely heavily on the internet to keep an eye on the activities of anti-biotechnology groups.

 

Photo Gallery Click Here
 

Our next stop for the day was a tour of the Chesterfield Village Research Facility. Gary Barton greeted us and filled us in on the rules and security protocol. He then led us on a tour of this amazing research facility. He explained how concepts become marketable products, and all the steps they must go through to get there. For every product we see available to us in the marketplace, it probably began in a race with 5 to 7 thousand other product concepts. He showed us many of the laboratories and the machinery used to maintain continuity in testing. We also visited the growing rooms, and the greenhouses on top of the building. He explained how gene splicing works, and how they inject DNA with new genes and then analyze where in the DNA strand it would be most effective. For any given product, it is about an 8- to 10-year process from concept to market. Many thanks go to our friends at Monsanto for this very interesting and eye-opening tour.
 

We then boarded a bus again and headed to the Monsanto headquarters, a 210-acre campus. We met our host for this part of our day, Tom Helscher, who is the director of global industry affairs. We grabbed some lunch and ate while he filled us in on the “Freedom to Operate” campaign, which includes the “Milk is Milk” campaign that we have seen on billboards and elsewhere in California. This campaign is designed to counter the challenges presented by opponents to biotechnology and GMOs, both here and abroad, and to ensure that producers continue to have the choice to use legally approved products. Next, Dean Hendrickson, director of national accounts, gave us an overview of Monsanto Dairy Business. He showed us trends identified over the past few years, and he noted how cow numbers and milk prices relate to each other.
 

Our next speaker was Roger Cady, technical project manager. He further explained the trends in milk cow numbers and milk price correlations. He also did a few exercises with us to project the future of our industry and he projected how many fewer dairies there may be across the country. He had many interesting graphs on herd size, production, and the percentage of total milk from each size category. We were stunned by some of the projections of what we may see in the next 5 to 10 years. He admits he is not always the favorite speaker in many parts of the country, where herd sizes are very small and producers are not particularly progressive.
 

Next, Kevin Coffman filled us in on the dairy pipeline for new products. Dairy product development is very similar to the plant development process we saw at Chesterfield. We talked about Decisive™, their new semen sexing technology, and their new Posilac™ plant in Georgia. They also are constantly looking for new technologies and products to enhance their dairy line, but once again it is a very long and tedious process to get a marketable product.
 

The final speaker for the afternoon was Brian Lowery. He is very passionate about his job, but even more passionate about his grocery store. He is one of those guys always hounding the store manager about dairy products. He brought in a whole variety of products that he found in the dairy case at his local store. He went through them one by one and talked about the opportunity for milk to regain its rightful dominance in the dairy case. We appreciated his passion and humor to finish our day of learning. We hope he will be able to make it to the WUD convention in Bakersfield to present this topic to many more of you.
 

Monsanto topped off the day by taking us to Carmine’s Steakhouse with our host Tom Helscher. We enjoyed a great meal and had excellent open and honest conversations about Monsanto and the dairy industry. We are very grateful to Monsanto for being such a gracious host. After dinner, we took a walk down to the St. Louis Arch and enjoyed a little more of this beautiful city along the river. We didn’t want to stay out too late that night, because we knew we had to leave at six the next morning for the airport. Once again, thanks to Monsanto for a very informational day of visiting and learning.