In recent years one company, Monsanto, has led the way in a new technology for developing food crops-genetic engineering. The company's executives say that the new genetically engineered crops Monsanto is developing could help feed the world and preserve the environment. But NPR's Dan Charles reports that in many parts of the world, Monsanto is criticized for taking advantage of farmers and promoting genetically altered food without informing consumers. Monsanto hardly seems cut out for the role of global corporate villain. The company's chief executive, Robert Shapiro, seems at least as interested in global poverty as corporate profits.
Poverty is our common ancestor.
You don't have to go very far back in my family and my guess is in your family or anyone else's family to find desperately poor people. My guess is if you go back in any of our families you find people who died of starvation. And for that to have happened and to remain indifferent for people who are still caught in that seems to me disrespectful of one's history and one's own ancestors. Shapiro says biotechnology can put better seeds in the hands of the world's farmers, increase the supply of food and reduce poverty. He set up a division within the company dedicated to sustainability.