Adel, Ia. - A few multinational corporations dominate the seed industry in the United States. With these companies harnessing biotechnology and obtaining patents for seed genetics, many smaller seed companies have found themselves unable to compete.\r\n\r\nBut a family-owned seed company in Adel has embraced the burgeoning technology, too, and has become a major supplier of soybean genetics.\r\n\r\nStine Seed Co., one of the largest privately held agricultural seed companies in the United States, controls the genes that are included in more than half of the soybean seed sold in the Midwest - one of the largest soybean-producing markets in the world, with annual sales of more than $1 billion.\r\n\r\nThe story of Stine Seed, one of a cluster of related companies owned by founder Harry Stine, his family and employees, is one of the fascinating agribusiness success stories in the history of American agriculture.\r\n\r\nA business that began as a fledgling soybean research venture in the basement of the Stine family's farmhouse, it has become a major company in soybean genetics, with production spanning the Midwest, with winter production located in South America, and with collaborative agreements with companies across the nation.\r\n\r\nFounder Harry Stine, 61, has worked in the soybean industry for more than 40 years. Fresh out of college in the 1960s, he worked in his father's soybean cleaning business on the family farm near Adel.\r\n\r\nWithin a few years, however, he had ventured into soybean and corn breeding. In recent years, the Stine crop seed research business has boomed with the integration of biotechnology into production agriculture.\r\n\r\nStine's main business is enhancing corn and soybean germ plasm, the genetic material that is the basis for crop seeds. The company sells seeds under its own Stine Seed label, and those sales have grown. But in recent years, the much faster-growing segment of Stine Seed's business has been the licensing of Stine's germ plasm to other seed companies.\r\n\r\nStine declined to disclose sales figures, but said that in the mid-1990s, sale of Stine brand seeds accounted for about 25 percent of the company's revenues. Today, the figure has fallen below 10 percent, while the germ plasm business' portion of revenues has surged.\r\n\r\nStine did not anticipate how swiftly U.S. farmers would adopt biotech-based crop seeds, but that trend has increased his crop genetics business nearly five-fold since the mid-1990s, when the new class of seed products hit the market.\r\n\r\n""I did not see it coming,"" Stine said recently, while sitting in his office on his Dallas County farm. ""It would be nice to say I was smart and I did, but I didn't see it until it was here.""\r\n\r\n""It"" was U.S. farmers' rapid adoption of Roundup Ready soybeans, a class of seed designed by Monsanto Co. of St. Louis to tolerate application of the popular herbicide Roundup. Introduced in the mid-1990s, Roundup Ready soybeans dominate farms in the United States, where more than 80 percent of the soybean acreage this year was planted with the herbicide-resistant soybeans.\r\n\r\nDozens of seed companies negotiated licensing agreements with Monsanto, giving them access to Monsanto's seed engineering work in order to sell their seeds with the Roundup Ready trait. But those seed companies also needed soybean germ plasm, and many turned to Stine for plant genetics.\r\n\r\nRoundup Ready soybeans have been a bonanza, both for Monsanto and Stine Seed. Seed companies pay fees to Monsanto for access to the seed technology, and those using Stine germ plasm pay other fees to the Iowa company for that access.\r\n\r\nIn just a few years, Stine's soybean germ plasm business more than doubled. As the percentage of acres planted with Roundup Ready soybeans has soared, Stine's soybean genetics sales have doubled again.\r\n\r\nThe recent growth of Stine Seed and future developments are tied to Harry Stine's collaborative agreements with other companies and his investments in new ventures. They include:\r\n\r\n* Forming a 15-year research agreement with Monsanto and Monsanto-owned Asgrow Seed Co. to share technology and germ plasm in order to enhance crop genetics.\r\n\r\n* Investing in NewLink Genetics, a biotechnology startup company based in Ames that is developing a drug that would use the human immune system to fight cancer.\r\n\r\n* Acquiring controlling interest in ProdiGene, a biotech company in Texas that is developing technology to produce human and animal pharmaceuticals using crops.\r\n\r\nBefore the term ""biotechnology"" surfaced in agribusiness, Stine was using the technology to develop better seed products.\r\n\r\nIn 1995, his company opened a biotech laboratory at the Iowa State University Research Park in Ames, where researchers have perfected an alternative way to genetically engineer crops. Invented by a University of Chicago scientist, the technique involves injecting DNA into plant, animal or bacterial cells at supersonic speed.\r\n\r\nStine owns the perfected technology and has begun to grant other companies access to it through licensing agreements, said Martin Wilson, a plant cell biologist who oversees plant transformation work at the laboratory.\r\n\r\nThe agricultural seed industry is still Stine's primary focus, however. About a half-dozen major companies, including Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., based in Des Moines, dominate that industry. A few intermediate-sized companies, including Stine, develop seed genetics, while smaller companies produce and distribute crop seed.\r\n\r\nIn recent years, seed companies have sought patent protection for their plant genetics and for processes they use to develop crop seeds. Before plant life could be patented in the United States, Stine employed ""use restriction"" agreements with growers and other seed companies to keep them from misappropriating Stine genetics.\r\n\r\nThe company still relies on those agreements, although it also has applied for about 200 patents and acquired more than 100 on its soybean germ plasm.\r\n\r\nStine estimated that his company controls genetics included in about two-thirds of all soybean seed sold in the Midwest.\r\n\r\nJust how successful has Harry Stine been?\r\n\r\nStine has amassed more than 10,000 acres of central Iowa farmland, donated millions of dollars to his alma mater, McPherson College in Kansas, and travels the world seeking ways to expand the business.\r\n\r\nWith characteristic nonchalance, he says it has been ""unbelievably easy.""\r\n\r\n\r\nFounder continually researches\r\n\r\nAdel, Ia. - Sunrise is still about an hour away when Harry Stine gets to the office.\r\n\r\nSitting at his computer, he checks the outside temperature: 30 degrees, up from the low of 29. Fortunately, his crew had completed harvesting seed corn inbreds the previous evening, saving at-risk, moisture-containing seeds from the frost.\r\n\r\nDuring harvest, Stine begins work at 5:30 a.m., some days earlier, to sift data gathered overnight by the harvesting crews that work around the clock.\r\n\r\nStine grew up here on a farm and still considers himself a farmer. He plays the part, usually wearing blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt to work. He drives a plain pickup truck. He prefers table tennis to golf. He measures his words, delivering them with a dry wit.\r\n\r\nStine has created a commanding position in the competitive seed business, where just a few companies control most of the industry and revenues run into the billions of dollars. Some would crumple trying to compete in that environment, particularly in a year like 2003, when hot, dry weather has cut yields in some areas by more than half.\r\n\r\nNot Stine. He is as relaxed as a farmer in a year with good weather, big crops and high prices.\r\n\r\nAsk him how he's doing, and he says, ""Fantastic,"" elongating the first syllable for emphasis.\r\n\r\nAs head of one of the largest privately held seed companies in the United States, he travels the world looking for ways to stay ahead in the seed business, taking time along the way to expand his understanding of history, science and nature.\r\n\r\nA recent visit to Iceland to investigate the use of geothermally heated greenhouses for offseason seed production was a disappointment, but a side trip to Greenland to visit the homeplace of Eric the Red, Leif Ericson's father, was fun, Stine said.\r\n\r\nStine could have retired long ago, but he enjoys his work too much to stop.\r\n\r\n""He loves data,"" said Chuck Hanson, manager of production at Stine. ""It's like Christmas for him this time of year.""\r\n\r\nData on superior seed products - called elite lines - are Stine's favorite.\r\n\r\n""It's more fun,"" he said. ""Those are the things that we either are putting into the marketplace or are increasing so we will be in a position to put it in the marketplace."" \r\nDes Moines Register/Anne Fitzgerald
