US biotechnology giant Monsanto is probably revered and reviled around the world in equal measure.
Undoubtedly it has many detractors - especially in the green lobby - but that has not prevented it from winning the prestigious 2009 Company of the Year Award from well-known US business magazine, Forbes.
The award is based primarily on the company's financial performance.
In 2009 Monsanto sold $7.3bn of GM seeds compared with $4bn by second-placed DuPont. Its sales have increased 18% a year for the last five years and in "fiscal 2009" it made $2.1bn profit from a turnover of $11.7bn.
Impressive figures indeed. But as Forbes points out, there is more to the Monsanto story than this.
The company has had to ward off all manner of bad publicity over the years, being portrayed as a "Satan of agriculture" for daring to modify plant genes, and being accused of threatening the world with ecological catastrophe....
These complaints have subsided in recent months as the world has woken up to the fact that GM technologies might actually be quite useful in meeting the challenges of food security.
But Monsanto has faced fresh criticism, this time for using its near-monopoly status to inflate prices to farmers for its seeds. As Forbes points out, the company has had to develop "a thick corporate skin" .
Undoubtedly Monsanto and the whole GM movement will continue to have its detractors. Just this week at the Oxford Farming Conference the Soil Association launched a bitter attack on the government's chief scientific advisor John Beddington for daring to suggest that GM technology may be part of the solution to world hunger.
"GM is not going to feed a growing world population sustainably, now or in the future," it said. Instead it suggested expanding organic farming and "encouraging citizens to adopt sustainable diets that change with the seasons". "These actions will provide greater resilience for our food supplies than outmoded techno-fixes," it claimed.
Really? Maybe in the more affluent households of Surrey and Middlesex, but not in the wider world, where 1bn people already go to bed hungry each night and there will be another 3bn mouths to feed in the next 40 years.
As Forbes magazine points out, GM technology has a crucial role to play in boosting food supply. For, while conventional plant breeding is still the key to lifting yields, biotech genes are needed to ensure that these gains are protected from all the "pests, weeds and droughts" that can destroy a crop's potential.
Forbes also acknowledges that Monsanto's track record over the past 15 years has been exemplary in terms of human health and environmental impact, and it applauds the company's development of second generation GMs that offer better taste and nutrition.
To my mind, Forbes's endorsement of Monsanto through its Company of the Year Award is a reflection of the fact that food security is now right at the top of the political agenda and biotechnolgy will be key if the world is to meet the challenges posed by an expanding population and climate change.
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