Monsanto - History

History

Monsanto was founded in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1901, by John Francis Queeny, a 30‑year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry. He funded the start-up with his own money and capital from a soft drink distributor and gave the company his wife's maiden name. His father-in-law was Emmanuel Mendes de Monsanto, a wealthy financier of a sugar company active in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and based in St. Thomas in the Danish West Indies. The company's first product was the artificial sweetener saccharin, which was sold to the Coca-Cola Company.

In 1919 Monsanto expanded to Europe by entering a partnership with Graesser's Chemical Works at Cefn Mawr near Ruabon, Wales to produce vanillin, aspirin and its raw ingredient salicylic acid, and later rubber processing chemicals. This site was later sold and closed in 2010. In the 1920s Monsanto expanded into basic industrial chemicals like sulfuric acid and PCBs, and Queeny's son Edgar Monsanto Queeny took over the company in 1928.

In 1946 it developed "All" laundry detergent and began to market it; they sold the product line to Lever Brothers in 1957. Also in the 1940s, Monsanto operated the Dayton Project, and later Mound Laboratories in Miamisburg, Ohio, for the Manhattan Project, the development of the first nuclear weapons and, after 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1947 one of its factories was destroyed in the Texas City Disaster. Monsanto acquired American Viscose from England's Courtauld family in 1949. In 1954 Monsanto partnered with German chemical giant Bayer to form Mobay and market polyurethanes in the United States.

Monsanto began manufacturing DDT in 1944, along with some 15 other companies. This insecticide was much welcomed in the fight against malaria-transmitting mosquitoes. Due to DDT's toxicity, its use in the United States was banned in 1972. In 1977 Monsanto stopped producing PCBs; the United States Congress banned domestic PCB production two years later. In the 1960s and 1970s, Monsanto was also one of the most important producers of Agent Orange for United States Armed Forces operations in Vietnam.

In the mid‑1960s, William Standish Knowles and his team invented a way to selectively synthesize enantiomers via asymmetric hydrogenation. This was an important advancement because it was the first method for the catalytic production of pure chiral compounds. Using this method, Knowles' team designed the "first industrial process to chirally synthesize an important compound" — L‑dopa, which is currently the main drug used to treat Parkinson's disease. In 2001 Knowles and Ryōji Noyori won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In the mid-60's chemists at Monsanto developed the Monsanto process for making acetic acid, which until 2000 was the method most widely used to make this important industrial chemical. In 1965 Monsanto chemists invented AstroTurf, which the company then commercialized.

In 1968 they became the first company to start mass production of (visible) light emitting diodes (LEDs), using gallium arsenide phosphide. This ushered in the era of solid-state lights. From 1968 to 1970, sales doubled every few months. Their products (discrete LEDs and seven-segment numeric displays) became the standards of industry. The primary markets then were electronic calculators, digital watches, and digital clocks. Monsanto was a pioneer of optoelectronics in the 1970s.

In 1979 Monsanto established the Edgar Monsanto Queeny safety award in honor of its former CEO (1928‑1960), an annual $2,000 prize given to a member of the American Society of Safety Engineers to encourage accident prevention.

Monsanto scientists became the first to genetically modify a plant cell in 1982. Five years later, Monsanto conducted the first field tests of genetically engineered crops.

In 1985 Monsanto acquired G. D. Searle & Company, a life sciences company focusing on pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and animal health. In 1993 Monsanto's Searle division filed a patent application for Celebrex, which in 1998 became the first selective COX‑2 inhibitor to be approved by the United States FDA. Celebrex became a blockbuster drug and was often mentioned as a key reason for Pfizer's acquisition of Monsanto's pharmaceutical business in 2002.

In 1994 Monsanto introduced a recombinant version of bovine somatotropin, brand-named Posilac. Monsanto later sold this business off to Eli Lilly and Company.

In 1996 Monsanto purchased Agracetus, the biotechnology company that had generated the first transgenic varieties of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and other crops, and which Monsanto had already been licencing technology from since 1991. Monsanto first entered the maize seed business when it purchased 40% of DEKALB in 1996; it purchased the remainder of the corporation in 1998. In 1998 Monsanto purchased Cargill's seed business, which gave it access to sales and distribution facilities in 51 countries. In 2005, it finalized the purchase of Seminis Inc, a leading global vegetable and fruit seed company, for $1.4 billion. This made it the world's largest conventional seed company at the time.

In 2007 Monsanto and BASF announced a long-term agreement to cooperate in the research, development, and marketing of new plant biotechnology products.

In October 2008, the company's Canadian division, Monsanto Canada Inc., was named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers by Mediacorp Canada Inc., and was featured in Maclean's news magazine.