Please tell us about the major achievements of your company during the past few years.

Over the last several years, Monsanto has seen exceptional performance out of our biotech research and breeding platforms, and has witnessed Monsanto traits being planted on an increased number of acres on an annual basis throughout the world.

Our performance has resulted in major achievements for our licensed seed partners and our Asgrow and DEKALB businesses, and has allowed us to bring forth important products to the marketplace prior to our competitors. Throughout the past several years, Monsanto has introduced new agricultural tools for growers - including new biotech traits like YieldGard Rootworm and Bollgard II insect-protected cotton, and has commercialized elite varieties and hybrids with key agronomic characteristics and traits.

We believe we have unparalleled experience in developing biotechnology products and delivering them to growers. After all, we are not successful unless our customers are successful. Therefore, our goal is focused on developing systems and products that are environmentally sustainable and deliver value to our growers - day in and day out.

In line with this commitment, we continue to invest more into biotech traits and seeds than any other company in the ag industry. Our company invests approximately $500 million annually to research new solutions for our customers - of which approximately 80 percent is directed towards our seed and traits business.

To date, our leadership in biotechnology has provided us with a considerable first-mover advantage. It has allowed us to introduce important new agronomic traits like our Roundup Ready trait technology and our YieldGard insect-protected corn and Bollgard insect-protected cotton technologies to growers first. And, we believe our early success has provided us with a significant competitive advantage as we deliver improved, second-generation traits and stacked-trait products. Today, we are commercializing second-generation traits (Bollgard II) in advance of our competitors’ first-generation me-too trait technologies.

In the years ahead, we remain committed to investing in agricultural tools for growers. Our focus on biotech crop research is aimed at providing new tools in four key areas: yield improvement and stress tolerance, agronomic pest resistance traits, food improvement traits and improved animal feed and processing traits in Renessen (our joint with Cargill). Today, Monsanto is in the discovery phase of products that will be more stress-tolerant and provide improved yields, as well as crops with enhanced protein and lipid content. We believe our pipeline is robust and we are excited about our initial results on these important technologies.

What are your company's key challenges for the future?

Over the past seven years, our industry has witnessed a truly amazing adoption of biotech traits. Acres planted to biotech crops have continued to grow at a rapid pace for one very good reason - the technology is providing real benefits on farm. I don’t know if anyone could have predicted these adoption rates nearly twenty years ago when the first biotech plants were starting sprout.

Within the last year alone, we have seen not only an increase in the acres planted with biotech corn, but also an accelerated rate of adoption. Monsanto believes that one of the drivers of this increase is the availability of products that offer multiple, or "stacked" traits. At Monsanto, we are very excited about our stacked trait technologies - including our new YieldGard Plus corn technology. YieldGard Plus, once commercially available, will provide growers with in-seed protection, allowing the corn plant to protect itself against the damaging Western and Northern corn rootworm larvae and the European corn borer. This product will be the first stacked insect-protected corn technology - offering growers protection from yield-robbing insects both above and below the ground.

Today, Monsanto’s traits are used on more than 90 percent of the global acres planted with biotechnology crops. In 2003 alone, global acreage of crops with our traits grew by 11 percent, and has grown by 56 percent over the past three years. While this increase in acres is impressive, it is important that we be realistic about some of the challenges our industry faces - not only in the future but also today.

Within the last decade, Monsanto has made progress in gaining acceptance and regulatory approval for our products. While some world areas - including the U.S. - have adopted biotech crops on increased basis, we must realize that the technology faces public concerns and regulatory barriers in a number of countries. Therefore, it is important that we continue to work to address concerns and work with growers to highlight their first-hand experience with the technology. We must continue to highlight the scientific rigor and regulatory expertise that goes into every product prior to commercialization - so that the facts stand for themselves. It is important that our industry works to address these outstanding questions and concerns - it is a key step towards realizing the benefits of next generation technologies.

In order for growers to achieve the full potential of our biotechnology products, we must earn the confidence of government regulators, the food and feed industry, and ultimately consumers. We believe we have made considerable progress in demonstrating the benefits of agricultural biotechnology - including reduced pesticide use and expansion of conservation tillage techniques that reduce soil erosion - and the safety of food and feed from biotechnology crops, but we must continue.