Autor: gabriela burian | Publicado: 2013-02-17T20:19:00-08:00

HAS MONSANTO GONE GREEN?


Translation from Época Negócios - SÃO PAULO - (SP) - January, 2013&nbsp; 

Five years ago the engineer Gabriela Burian began dealing with sustainability at the biggest producer of transgenic seeds in the world. The work done in Brazil had gone so well that head office promoted her to global director in order to implement this idea in other countries. 

CLARICE COUTO

The agronomist Gabriela Burian was in an elevator when she got the news that would change the whole direction of her career. Right there and then, on a Friday in November 2007, she bumped into Rodrigo Almeida, director of corporate affairs for Monsanto, manufacturer of herbicides, conventional seeds and genetically modified soybean, corn, cotton and sorghum. Almeida did not beat around the bush: “Setting up the area of sustainability has been approved and it is up to you to manage it” Gabriela’s (the then national sales manager for the forestry sector) mission was to change the way in which the workers and clients of the company viewed the matter. “I had been dreaming of that”, she said. There were some who had alerted her about the risk of betting all on one area that could either sink or swim, but, 5 years later, Monsanto’s lady of sustainability would have the first proof that her choice had been the right one: The global president of the company, Hugh Grant, would invite her to do the same work as she had done in Brazil in other regions of the world.

Gabriela Burian, 47, is now in Saint Louis, in the state of Missouri, where Monsanto’s global head office is. She moved to the United States to take up the job of global director for Sustainable Agricultural Ecosystems, which is a position that is as important as it is ungrateful in the hierarchy of the company. This is because the success of her work does not depend only on internal approval. It is also measured by the way in which the market starts to view Monsanto. Gabriela knows that the task of raising the Green flag in the name of the Queen of transgenics is still a tremendous challenge; there are more than a few NGOs and scientists who severely question the company’s procedures. The geneticist, Paulo Kageyama, professor at USP and ex-director of the Forestry Biodiversity Department of the Environment Ministry, is one of these critics. “When I was in the CTNBio [commission responsible for allowing the sale of transgenic varieties] I showed them that the isolation distance between transgenic corn and the areas surrounding it had to be at least a thousand meters, and not a hundred as had been approved, in order to avoid contaminating the conventional corn.” he said. “But a larger area would have made using transgenics more difficult. 

Those in favor of the technology state that there are no conclusive studies regarding the harm that adopting genetically modifies organisms can do. Quite the contrary, in fact: they allege that GMOs help to reduce the consumption of water and that they are the solution to the UN’s warning regarding the need to increase food production by 70% by 2050. This side of the balance has been gaining popularity in Brazil. The country has been, since 2009, the second largest producer of transgenics in the world, behind only the United States. Monsanto’s turnover in Brazil has leapt from R$ 2 billion in 2010 to R$ 2.8 billion in 2011, a 40% increase. The target by 2030 is to double corn, soybean and cotton productivity and to lower by a third the current use of water, energy and agrochemicals when growing these crops. 

Gabriela is stuck in the middle of this battle between those who vilify and those who glorify Monsanto. "When I was at university, I often wondered what we were going to do to feed more and more people without using up the few resources left on Earth” , she said. Since joining Monsanto, in 1996, her ascent had only been in the commercial area. Her fortuitous environmental projects she ran on her own back. With this responsibility to organize the area of sustainability, Gabriela needed to improve her qualifications. So she added to her Resume, which already had a PhD in Agronomy, specializations from Unicamp (University of Campinas) and from the Dutch organization, Sustainability Challenge Foundation. She also surrounded herself with people who understood the subject well and took part in projects like the Getúlio Vargas Foundation and the NGO Conservation International (Cl).

Together with Cl, Monsanto developed one of the most important initiatives of its Green portfolio – the Project called Produce and Conserve - which was launched in 2008. In this Project the company and the NGO have invested US$ 13 million so far. The purpose of this program is to give support to NGOs that already work with conservation in the Cerrado and Atlantic Rainforest areas of the northeast. In the Cerrado region in Bahia, agronomists from the company have formed a link between environmentalists and over 50 producers – groups that are traditionally antagonistic – to map out pastures, plantations and conserved lands in seven municipalities. It was discovered that if producers continue to open up new areas for cattle raising, the conserved portion of the Cerrado in the region will fall from the current 50% to 20% in 2020. This would seriously effect the water used on the properties. With this data in hand, the Cl, in 2011, set up a campaign to recuperate 100% of the river banks and hill tops in the town of Luis Eduardo Magalhães in Bahia. When giving support to projects such as these. Gabriela came up with some new ideas for the conservative rural world and made access to landowners easier for the environmentalists (as well as for the Monsanto salesmen).

Gabriela has inserted the subject of sustainability into the agendas of every department in Monsanto. She coordinated the first inventory of the company’s greenhouse effect gas emissions and started to offer training to around 20 transporters, so that its executives would understand and try to reduce the environmental impacts of the production chain. The president of Monsanto Brazil, André Dias, says that there is no way of measuring the financial result of sustainable activities, but he is convinced that the practices improve relations with clients and among the workers themselves. “I can notice the pride within the sales team,” he says. 

Since she moved to Saint Louis with her husband, Eric, a consultant in the oil industry (irony of destiny?), and their two children (Alice,11, and Artur, 8), Gabriela’s routine is far from being boring: there are daily meetings with leaders of each department in the American office, videoconferences with managers from other countries, meetings with representatives from NGOs, business trips and taking part in UN conferences. Little by little, she is reinforcing Monsanto’s sustainable agenda and turning the Brazilian ideas into global ones. One of these is to copy, in countries that have wide biodiversity, the projects for maintaining areas of native vegetation that have been implemented in Brazil in partnership with the CI. México, the USA and Indonesia are the first targets. For all new environmental activities, Gabriela will have a budget of US$ 5 million.

"I have never seen in any large companies a situation in which a subsidiary takes to the head office a culture of concern about sustainability”, says André Guimarães, director of CI. However, the president of the Akatu Institute, Hélio Mattar, cautions the fact of the company diving into the sustainable arena. “The projects are good and helping to conserve natural areas is a positive thing, but all this does not get away from the operations dilemma that exists within Monsanto. The studies regarding the safety of transgenics are not yet conclusive”, he says. He thinks the company should be more transparent, which is essential for someone who intends to be sustainable. “We need to talk not only about what is good for us, but also about what is bad for us and needs to be improved”. 

MONSANTO’S SUSTAINABLE PROJECTS IN BRAZIL



The economic value of biodiversity 

Monsanto participates in the TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity), initiative of the G8 +5 (group of developed and emerging countries) that proposes to calculate the value of services provided by ecosystems. In 2013, the company will begin a pilot project in Bahia.

Bridge between NGOs and producers

Professional of the company have intermediated meetings between Conservation International and farmers of western Bahia. One result was the partnership with 12 landowners of Luís Eduardo Magalhães (BA) who recovered 402 acres on river banks and hill tops.

Conservation of Atlantic Forest

In united projects in the northeastern portion of the forest, one calculated savings in water collection within the Dois Irmãos park in Recife (PE), in relation to the operation in a degraded area. The first option came out cheaper, which can lead to the remuneration of the park for this service.

Awareness of suppliers

The completion of the first report on emissions of greenhouse gases by Monsanto showed that some of them were made by its suppliers. Therefore, the company provided training to 20 carriers on ways to reduce and minimize their CO2 emissions.

The 1st sustainability report

In 2011, Monsanto published its first sustainability report according to the international standard GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), which shows the company's achievements and gaps in the management of economic, environmental and social aspects.