Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto’s executive vice president and chief technology officer, will share the $250,000 World Food Prize with two other scientists who helped devise how to insert foreign genes into plants: Marc Van Montagu of Belgium and Mary-Dell Chilton of the United States. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/monsanto-executive-is-among-world-food-prize-winners.html?hp The crops are shunned in many countries and by many consumers, who say the health and environmental effects of the crops have not been adequately studied. And the role the crops can play in increasing yields and helping farming adapt to climate change is still subject to some debate. One study organized by the World Bank and United Nations concluded in 2008 that genetically modified crops would play only a small role in fighting world hunger.
Genetically engineered crops, which for the most part contain genes from bacteria, now account for roughly 90 percent of the corn, soybeans and cotton grown in the United States. Globally, genetically modified crops are grown on 420 million acres by 17.3 million farmers, over 90 percent of them small farmers in developing countries, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, an organization that promotes use of biotechnology.
The book, “Lords of the Harvest,” described Dr. Fraley as “preternaturally self-confident” and driven, a Midwest farm boy who did not want to go back to the tractor and instead preferred the perks of corporate life, like fancy clothes and sports cars.  He harbored “oversized ambitions and visions of a business empire in the making,”

Of the roughly $8 million in contributions received by The World Food Prize Foundation in 2011, Monsanto gave $40,000, Syngenta nearly $50,000 and DuPont Pioneer, a seed company, $280,000, according to the foundation’s report to the Internal Revenue Service. Far bigger contributions were received from the state of Iowa, where the prize foundation is based, and from some nonprofit organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation.

The names of the committee members are kept secret to shield them from lobbying.