Monsanto Should Lose Some Battles to Win the War Over GMOs

One of the most compelling stories I heard at the recent Aspen Ideas Festival was from Brett Begemann, president and chief operating officer of Monsanto.

Begemann told of visiting a poor farmer in India. They didn’t speak the same language but did share one word. The farmer pointed at a new second story on his tiny house and said, with a big smile, “Bollgard.” He pointed at a new bicycle and said, “Bollgard.” Finally, he pointed to his two young children wearing new school uniforms and said, “Bollgard.”

Bollgard is Monsanto’s cotton seed. After switching to it, the farmer doubled his yield while reducing his pesticide usage. The added profits paid for the house addition, bicycle and schooling for his kids.

Begemann told his story during an Aspen session titled, “Agricultural Innovation as an Economic Game Changer.” Also speaking at Aspen was Robert Fraley, Monsanto’s chief technology officer. Fraley’s topic was, “Feeding the Next Billion.”

Begemann and Fraley painted a persuasive picture of how Monsanto’s agricultural innovations in biotechnology and big data could help address the looming food crisis posed by projected world population growth and rising living standards. We will have to double worldwide food production over the next 30 years, and we’ll have to do that in the face of climate change and land and water scarcity. Bollgard is one of those innovations. It is genetically modified to be resistant to a wide range of damaging insects and tolerant of Roundup, an herbicide made by Monsanto. Neither Begemann nor Fraley argued that Monsanto’s innovations were the silver bullet to feeding the world but did position them as important contributors.

Judging by audience questions and reactions, however, Monsanto’s high-powered efforts in Aspen failed to ameliorate the more immediate crises that Monsanto faces: the widespread resistance to genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—like Bollgard—and the massive toll that is taking on Monsanto’s brand. An ABC news poll conducted last year found that 52 percent of people believe that GMOs are unsafe, and another 13 percent are unsure. A recent Harris poll ranked Monsanto third-lowest in corporate reputation among the country’s 60 most visible companies—ahead of only BP and Bank of America (slipping 9 positions from the previous year).

At one level, these poll numbers don’t mean a thing. Monsanto, as Fortune recently declared, “is an unstoppable Leviathan, and GMOs are here to stay.” More to the capitalistic point, the Fortune article continued, “Monsanto makes money no matter what.” The company expects to earn about $5.1B in the current fiscal year and double its earnings per share within the next 5 years.

Based on hearing Begemann and Fraley speak, and a long conversation with Begemann afterward, I believe that public perception is very important to both men and to Monsanto. For one thing, no company wants to endure the market and political risk of being among the “most hated” in the world. For another, who would not rather work for a company that is loved, rather than hated—especially if you believe that you’re helping to solve world hunger (as Begemann clearly believes Monsanto is doing)?

To that end, here are three steps that Monsanto should consider to reverse the tide on the war for public sentiment:

1. Create a $100M X-Prize to find the dangers. The safety debate was clearly the most frustrating to Begemann. From his perspective, there is no credible evidence that supports any safety concerns associated with GMO crops after 30 years in the field and countless scientific studies.

Begemann was well versed with every negative study cited in the Q&A with the Aspen audience and swiftly refuted each one at a detailed level. Fraley even distributed a USB thumb drive (shaped like an ear of corn) packed full of scientific papers.

I would guess, however, that neither Begemann nor Fraley changed a single mind in the audience. One audience member told me, “He was completely dismissive. I felt like I was listening to a tobacco executive denying the health effects of smoking.”

To have a chance at alleviating the considerable doubt that consumers and policy makers have about GMOs, Monsanto needs to find what Cass Sunstein, the behavioral economist, calls “surprising validators.” Here’s why, as Sunstein wrote in the NY Times:

People tend to dismiss information that would falsify their convictions. But they may reconsider if the information comes from a source they cannot dismiss. People are most likely to find a source credible if they closely identify with it or begin in essential agreement with it. In such cases, their reaction is not, “how predictable and uninformative that someone like that would think something so evil and foolish,” but instead, “if someone like that disagrees with me, maybe I had better rethink.”

Applied to the GMO debate, skeptics will tend to dismiss all the “balanced science” and government-required safety studies that Monsanto holds out as proof. Who might be surprising validators on GMOs? Those who are known to oppose it.

Rather than attacking or dismissing negative studies, Monsanto should provide funding and incentives for more of them. It should rigorously dig into the potential dangers of GMOs. This would effectively tell critics,

Take your best shot. If your initial findings hint at potential problems, here’s a fund that will help you dig deeper.

To the rest of the world, such a move would proclaim both Monsanto's confidence and its openness to find and fix any real dangers.

To address questions about objectivity, Monsanto must, of course, recuse itself from decisions about how funding is doled out and research is evaluated. For example, it could provide no-strings-attached funding to an independent research institute managed by Nobel-prize-winning scientists appointed by the presidents of MIT, Harvard and Johns Hopkins—with veto rights on appointments by Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Monsanto could also commit itself to continual audits to ensure the independence of the institute.

2. Commit to total transparency. Another accusation leveled at Monsanto is that it uses its patent claims and intellectual property protection laws to restrict access of independent researchers to GMO crops for research purposes. Researchers also complain that Monsanto doesn’t make its own research data available for independent verification.

For this problem, to paraphrase an observation by Louis Brandeis, sunshine is the best disinfectant. Monsanto could go a long way to casting aside such doubts by making all data available to qualified independent researchers, perhaps through the independent institute described above.

3. Surrender on GMO labeling. Unable to muster the science to ban GMOs, opponents are attempting to pass mandatory product labeling laws under the guise of “consumer choice.” Monsanto and other food industry giants view these efforts as just end runs around science and are fighting hard against them. Monsanto, instead, supports “voluntary labeling.” Many people, however, view “voluntary labeling” as doublespeak that shows that Monsanto has something to hide.

Ben and Jerry’s recent decision to remove all GMO ingredients from its products illustrate the lack of science supporting safety fears, the depth of consumer doubt and the efforts by opponents to push product labeling.

The company is making the move even though as Chris Miller, its activism manager, told the Atlantic,

We’re not scientists. We don’t have a position whether GMOs are good, bad, or otherwise.

If GMOs are not bad, why remove them? Because Ben and Jerry’s senses that its customers would rather see it on the “no” side when it comes to GMOs. What’s more, as the image below illustrates, Ben and Jerry’s is urging consumers to support state initiatives to require some sort of GMO labeling.

(Source: Ben and Jerry's)

Given its resources and supporting science, Monsanto and other big companies could probably defeat most of the battles over labeling in the US and other parts of the world. But it would be a Pyrrhic victory that solidifies consumer skepticism. Better to surrender on this front and accept the additional cost and complexity of labeling to increase the chances of winning the larger battle for public confidence.

* * *

Opponents are working hard to slow the adoption of GMOs. By taking these three measures, Monsanto might well aid those opponents’ efforts in the short term. The long-term risk, however, is minimal—if the science continues to prove out Monsanto’s position. If long-term safety issues are indeed uncovered, that would be to society’s benefit, and Monsanto would have done the right thing. Even then, Monsanto would probably be in the best position to address the uncovered issues and continue to “make money no matter what,” as pronounced by Fortune.

The greater risk is that the public relations battle takes a turn for the worse and that caustic public sentiment hinders, or even rolls back, the marketplace adoption of Monsanto’s products. That would be a bad day for science, for Monsanto and its investors, and for the billions who might otherwise benefit from Monsanto’s innovations.

Chunka Mui is coauthor of three books on corporate innovation including, most recently, The New Killer Apps: How Large Companies Can Out-Innovate Start-Ups.

This article was originally published at Forbes.com.