I would like to compliment Sam Western on a
well-written and insightful article (HCN, 12/26/05: A New Green
Revolution). However, I am curious about the origin of the
erroneous statement in the sidebar concerning universities and
organic research: “While the Legislature provides some funding,
companies such as Dow, Syngenta and Monsanto fund most of the
agricultural research that is done at land-grant universities.”
I’ve worked in conventional agriculture research
for the last seven years at Montana State University and never
received a penny from an agricultural company source. Some programs
at MSU do receive corporate support for testing or development of
specific products, but typically it’s a very minor proportion
of their research funding. Overall, I doubt that contributions from
corporate agriculture exceed 1 or 2 percent at MSU.
The
Montana Ag Experiment Station funding remains critical to the
research and education mission at MSU’S College of
Agriculture, to the tune of several million dollars annually. The
applied agricultural research mission at a land-grant university
largely depends on this state support (which is overmatched
federally). In fact, this past fall, there was a political move to
reduce federal funding dramatically through the national Ag
Experiment Station. Had that occurred, Montana producers would
scarcely recognize the skeletal remains of the ag research mission.
Perry Miller, Associate Professor of
Cropping Systems, Montana State University
Bozeman,
Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Corporate agriculture doesn’t control universities.
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