Monsanto: COTTON GROWERS BLAME NEW SEED FOR CROP LOSSES 

(Augusta Chronicle; 01/25/99)

Andrew Thompson said he felt like a failure when nearly a quarter of his
cotton crop withered in the field last year, costing him about $250,000.

"When you have strangers riding up and down the highway and see this
sorry crop, they say, `This is a sorry farmer,' " said the Brooks County grower.
"It's straining emotionally."

Now Mr. Thompson says the problem was the seed he used on 350 of his
1,600 acres. He is among about 190 farmers in Georgia, Florida and North Carolina
who have hired attorneys to represent them in a legal dispute with **Monsanto**
Co. and Delta Pine and Land Co.

**Monsanto**, based in St. Louis, developed the technology used in the
seed. Delta Pine and Land, based in Scott, Miss., produced and sold it under the
name of a subsidiary, Paymaster Cottonseed.

Mr. Thompson's suit, filed in Superior Court in Quitman, contends the
companies rushed the seed to market without adequate testing and, when they
began receiving complaints in 1997, misled growers and agriculture officials
about the extent of the problem.

The seed in question is a brand known as Paymaster 1220, Bollgard and
Roundup Ready.

Bollgard is a genetically engineered trait that makes cotton resistant to
tobacco bud worms, a common pest. Roundup Ready is another genetically
engineered trait that enables the plants to endure applications of Roundup,
a **Monsanto** herbicide. Cotton farmers have to spray herbicides like
Roundup to kill weeds and defoliate the cotton plants before harvest.

Farmers, who pay an extra technology fee when they purchase the seed,
have embraced the technology because it lowers labor, fuel and insecticide costs.

Nationwide, they planted 1.8 million acres of genetically engineered
cotton - including brands made by other manufacturers - in 1996, 3 million acres in
1997 and more than 5 million acres last year, said **Monsanto** spokesman
Gary Barton. He credited the technology for an 850,000-gallon reduction in
insecticide spraying.

Steve Brown, a University of Georgia cotton specialist, said university
researchers tested the Paymaster 1220 seed in 1997, noticed problems such as
deformed roots and warned growers not to use it.

Nevertheless, Georgia farmers, eager to reduce costs and to use the new
technology, used Paymaster to plant about 18 percent of the state's 1.3
million- acre cotton crop.
(Copyright 1999)