Betting the Farm
How a Maverick Entrepreneur and a Band of Scientists Changed Agriculture Forever
This is the tale of a wild corporate ride at the beginning of the agricultural biotechnology revolution. In their eyewitness account, two scientists who participated at the start of the genetically modified crops revolution tell how David Padwa, a charismatic entrepreneur who saw the promise of the new technology as a way to feed people and protect the environment, set out to make it happen.
David, along with his “wingman” and fellow entrepreneur, Gene Keluche, the first Native American with a Harvard MBA, and his money man, Gilbert de Botton, head of the Rothschilds bank in Switzerland, started the seed company Agrigenetics. They then raised today’s equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars through a limited partnership and contracted the world’s best academic scientists to discover new useful genes and get them into seeds.
The times were alive with competing startups; big oil, chemical, and pharma companies were also getting into the game, and hustlers were ever present. Takeover offers, unintended consequences of government legislation, soaring interest rates, stock market volatility, and huge egos had to be managed. Though well before the advent of the internet, the lessons from this extraordinary venture are as relevant today as they were forty years ago.
Dr. Janice Kimpel
Janice Kimpel received her BS in botany from the University of Illinois in 1977 and her PhD in plant physiology in 1982 from the University of California, Davis. She was lured to the position of External Contracts Research Manager at Agrigenetics in 1985, which her academic colleagues thought ill-advised. She enjoyed the excitement of working with cutting-edge researchers, like Adrienne Clarke, while learning about the patenting process and the importance of intellectual property in the business world. After leaving Agrigenetics, Janice began a career in technology transfer and business development at the University of Georgia. After becoming a Registered Patent Agent with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, she worked for three years at an intellectual property law firm, and then joined a startup biotech vaccine company as Vice President for Business Development, managing a large patent portfolio and rising to the Office of the CEO. She now consults regularly for startup biotechnology companies.
Dr. Adrienne E. Clarke
Adrienne E. Clarke, AC, FAA, FTSE, was educated at the University of Melbourne and graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry in 1963. After post-doctoral experience at Baylor University and the University of Michigan, she returned to Melbourne as a Research Fellow at the School of Botany. Her work to understand the molecular basis for self-incompatibility in plants was supported by an Agrigenetics contract. The success of the research led to her election the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering and, in the US, as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Science and The American Academy of the Arts and Sciences. She has held appointments in Australia as Chairman of CSIRO, Lieutenant Governor of the State of Victoria and Chancellor of LaTrobe University. She served on the Boards of several major public companies in Australia and New Zealand and founded two startup companies. She attributes her understanding of business and intellectual property management gained during her contract work with Agrigenetics to preparing her for the challenges of these appointments, which are not the usual career path of a research scientist.
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