GRI PR MA GRI PR 1 UN 7 UN 8

More Than Just the Price of Doing Business

At Monsanto, product stewardship and safety aren’t just boxes we need to check. They are commitments that live at the very center of our business model. Our customers are farmers, and no one understands and values proper stewardship as they do. We’re proud to deliver products that are ethically developed and held to stringent performance and safety standards, because it’s just the right thing to do for farmers, their customers and our planet. We also work hard to openly share information about our stewardship and safety programs for our products and business processes. For a comprehensive overview of our stewardship and safety commitments, please visit our website at http://www.monsanto.com/products/Pages/safety-technical-information.aspx.

Our people also seek to enhance the dialogue about the safety of our products by sharing research studies from independent global experts from the business, academic and NGO communities. We keep a growing list of research studies on our website at: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/food-labeling.aspx

What constitutes product safety and stewardship for us? Simply put, product stewardship is the responsible development, management and use of technologies and products across our seeds, traits and crop protection businesses throughout their entire product life cycle.

This ideal lives in the heads and hearts of our people as they make decisions on the direction of the company. It’s in the greenhouses and laboratories as our plant scientists develop new products. And it continues with our people with mud on their boots, looking out over the farm fields across the world.

It’s not enough for us to simply commit ourselves to the safety and stewardship of our products; we seek to meet the highest standards for the agricultural industry, as well.

That’s one of the reasons we became a founding member of the Excellence Through Stewardship^® program. This program establishes a series of best practices in the field of agricultural biotechnology.

UN 7 The Tools We Use

How do we evaluate the safety and benefits of our products for our customers, consumers and the environment? It’s a critical expectation, and we’re constantly improving our tools and processes to meet the challenge. The Life Cycle Stewardship Activities Management Process (LCStAMP) is our process to design stewardship requirements and to guide products through their life cycle. It helps us track responsible product development, management, use and eventual discontinuation. We created a web-based IT tool called Stewardship Activities Management Process Electronic Repository (StAMPER), which allows us to monitor and record status, compliance and other important safety factors as products move through their respective life cycles.

GRI LA 10 The Product Stewardship team developed computer-based training on product stewardship and StAMPER, and the results would make anyone proud. The program achieved an initial completion rate of more than 85 percent and continues to be deployed across the globe.

85% INITIAL COMPLETION RATE OF THE PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP TRAINING INITIATIVE

And while StAMPER is an important part of data collection, it’s just a part of a bigger program. There are four phases or components that make up this framework:

True Stewardship in Action – Genuity^® DroughtGard™ Hybrids

The U.S. drought of 2012 was devastating to farm yields. Like many agricultural crises, it provided an opportunity to test the efficacy of new technologies. By applying the LCStAMP management process and working hand-in-hand with farmers, our teams tested seed that uses less water during times of drought stress, reducing yield loss from drought.

DUE FOR RELEASE IN 2013

Genuity^® DroughtGard™ Hybrids are part of a system combining best agronomic recommendations, plant breeding, and the world’s first drought tolerant trait. This system has shown higher yields in water-stressed environments, which helps manage risk.