Manitoba Co-operator | October 7, 1999 | Laura Rance
Calgary - With all the controversy swirling around their multi-billion-dollar biotechnology investments, it seemed a little odd to find the industry's senior executives clustered in a hotel ballroom listening to Bob Richards talk about his childhood in an isolated Newfoundland outpost.
But even the cell phones were silenced as members of the Crop Protection Institute sat there in that darkened room, hushed and clinging to the message Richards delivered as he paced back and forth across the stage.
The business consultant barely mentioned biotechnology in his hour-long presentation. Yet somehow, everything he said was like a clue to unraveling the maze of complications the people promoting it face these days in the marketplace.
The story says that Richards was among several speakers offering an outsider's view at this year's Crop Protection Institute's annual meeting.
It was a peculiar odyssey for a group more accustomed to the laboratory and the boardroom than a supermarket. The experience prompted one delegate to muse that maybe part of the industry's problem is gender.
The story says that the way Bob Richards sees it, technology may make more things possible, but it doesn't necessarily make them easier. That's a conundrum for modern business.
"Information technology has a tendency to create an arid environment for communication," Richards said, describing the chair that once occupied a spot just inside the door of his grandfather's kitchen. It was once a place where neighbors routinely stopped by for a chat, able to sit without removing their boots. When television arrived in the community, the chair sat empty.
He went on to say that, "Yes, the biotechnology must make sense from an intellectual point of view. It must be scientific, sound, it must have application. All of those things are necessary, but insufficient, because they will not find a receptive audience until there is an exchange of faith and an exchange of trust," he said.
There was a lot said about faith, trust, credibility and integrity at this year's conference. Delegates also heard those words are rarely associated with their industry.
Frank Lovsin, who's been in the Alberta grocery retail business for nearly 50 years, is more than a little perplexed at why one of biotechnology's giants is doing battle with a Saskatchewan farmer over ownership of its technology.
"Even if Monsanto wins the battle in a court of law, in the court of public opinion Monsanto and all the companies have lost," Lovsin said.
