To: Hugh Grant, President and CEO, Monsanto

As you are no doubt aware, your offer to donate hybrid corn and
vegetable seeds has stirred up quite a controversy in Haiti.

I’d like to call your attention to an article
I wrote on this issue recently for Inter Press Service. While I was in
Haiti for the month of May, I had a conversation with Chavannes
Jean-Baptiste, the head of a major Haitian peasant organization and a
leader of the international confederation La Via Campesina. He
criticized your donation from a perspective on seeds and agriculture
based on a very different world view that might be worth your time to
understand.

Your company blog says that the idea to donate seeds to Haiti came to
you and Executive Vice President Jerry Steiner at the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland. As you worked the crowd at that upscale
ski resort, the place must have been crawling with Corporate Masters of
the Universe and Brilliant Thinkers, who congregate yearly there to
deliberate on the world’s problems and how to solve them. But — going
out on a limb here — I’m guessing there were not many Haitian Peasant
Farmers.

While I’m sure some of the ideas on Haiti discussed there are worth
pursuing, if you want to understand what Haiti’s farmers need in the
wake of the January 12 earthquake and the hurricanes of two years ago, I
highly recommend going to Haiti to talk to some of them and to people
who work closely with them. Travel in most rural areas is
excruciatingly difficult on the ground, which is a reality farmers have
to live with, but you could always rent a helicopter. I expect you
would encounter a very different range of perspectives.

Your communications people say you did contact the Haitian Ministry
of Agriculture and got their approval to donate seeds. That’s a good
first step, but it doesn’t take a Macarthur Grant to figure out that
even the best-intentioned people behind the desks in a ministry,
especially one that has just suffered heavy losses in an earthquake,
might not always represent the final word on what impoverished farmers
deep in the countryside are thinking. And perhaps they wouldn’t want to
offend a corporation as wealthy and powerful as yours.

The U.S. Agency for International Development says they are going to
use the seeds for a project called WINNER. They may have some interesting ideas on
how to use them. Perhaps they have found some Haitian farmers who are
willing to try them. But they are an arm of the U.S. State Department,
and they ultimately represent the interests of the U.S. government, not
Haitians.

Fortunately, though, it’s not hard to find a wide range of opinion in
the Haitian countryside. During my time in Haiti, I encountered large,
sophisticated organizations of peasant farmers there that were very
happy to talk to me. And there are plenty of smart, experienced Haitian
agronomists and economists who are in intimate contact with realities
in the fields. I spent a week outside of Port-au-Prince and more time
in the city interviewing farmers, agronomists and others. I’d be glad
to put you in touch with some of them.