WAIMEA — As an agricultural research facility, the Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. Research Center here is in business to help feed more people and help farmers be more productive, according to the company president. “It’s all from the customer working
WAIMEA — As an agricultural research facility, the Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. Research Center here is in business to help feed more people and help farmers be more productive, according to the company president.
“It’s all from the customer working back. We want to help people understand that we are here to help farmers be more productive and, in the end, feed more people in the world,” said Richard McConnell, Pioneer Hi-Bred president.
He made a rare trip to the island this week, and further discussed the company’s presence on Kaua‘i.
“We have talked about how we can be more transparent on the island,” he said. “We have nothing to hide. Also, we want to find ways to better communicate to the general community what we do and how it fits with how we serve farmers all over the world,” McConnell said.
McConnell also discussed local concerns that people may have about the research.
“We are not working on plant-made pharmaceuticals,” he said. “We are also not putting human genes in any of our crops. What we are working on is trying to make corn hybrids more hearty for the environments they are grown in.”
According to McConnell, the Waimea Pioneer center has made tremendous progress.
“Today, we have the capability of doing some very sophisticated things,” he said. “This location is very strategic because Hawai‘i is a great environment in getting three generations of crop a year here.
“Obviously, one of the big things is that we have a lot more people here,” McConnell said. “We have a lot more professional people, including more professionally trained scientists, and the result is that they are a lot more integrated into our product development.”
Product development and a reinforcement of Pioneer’s role on the island were two main topics on McConnell’s agenda during the trip.
The facility opened operations in 1999, though McConnell’s last trip to Kaua‘i was in 1992.
The Pioneer company, which is a subsidiary of the DuPont Corporation, has been on Kaua‘i since 1968.
Pioneer is the world’s leading developer and supplier of hybrid seed corn and branded varietal soybean seed.
The company provides seed for corn, soybeans, sorghum, sunflower, alfalfa, canola, rice and wheat, as well as forage additives, crop-protection products and a variety of services.
Pioneer develops seed products through a combination of new technologies, such as gene mapping and gene transfer, along with conventional plant breeding and improvement practices.
“We have the ability to measure things today that we couldn’t years ago,” McConnell said. “We have a very large network of scientists (approximately 1,300) scattered over hundreds of locations.
“We firmly believe in the evolution of science,” he continued. “Our goal is to be able to see the plant from the inside and out. As we understand more, we can better learn how it works.
“We are going through a very dynamic period in time. For us, it’s been the genetics, the informational technology and the analytical capabilities that have improved. It’s not just one side of science that is evolving, but also a set of things like the computer, informational technology and genetics all converging to help us do our jobs better.”
Businessman Henry A. Wallace helped form the first company to market hybrid corn seed in 1926. The company was called the Hi-Bred Corn Company.
In 1935, that company changed its name to the Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company.
McConnell joined Pioneer in 1974 as a corn breeder in York, Neb., and started a corn-research program at Garden City, Kan. in 1977.
He moved to Johnston, Iowa in 1982 to serve as the assistant director of corn research, and was named director of corn research in 1984.
McConnell became the director of research for Pioneer’s North America crops in 1990 and, in 1994, was appointed senior vice president and global research director for Pioneer.
Following the DuPont acquisition of Pioneer in 1999, McConnell was named DuPont vice president responsible for agriculture research and development. He was named to his current position in September 2000.
McConnell was raised on a farm in northeast Colorado. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in agronomy from Colorado State University, and his doctorate in plant genetics from the University of Nebraska. He is also a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development.
