by Chris Cumo

PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. Eisenhower foresaw in 1961 the rise of a military-industrial complex but missed an equally potent union: the symbiosis between university and corporation. In 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that scientists may patent life. The decision was a boon to agricultural scientists, giving them exclusive rights to the profits of a new breed of crop or livestock for the duration of its patent.

The year of the court's ruling, Monsanto, an agri-chemical firm, gave Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences $2 million to derive crops and agricultural chemicals. Monsanto gained the rights to them and access to the college's laboratories, greenhouses and field plots. From the initial grant of $2 million in 1980, Monsanto gave the college nearly $14 million in 1990 and $42.4 million in 2000, making this the largest scientific partnership between a university and a corporation in the United States. "Our relationship with Monsanto has been mutually beneficial," said Cornell professor of crop physiology Ralph Obendorf.

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