Whether global warming is a scare-creating fad or not, it and its predecessors have certainly helped create this wonderful and emerging market in technologies that may do very nice things for all of us.
Natural entrepreneur
Her dream is creating, selling biopesticides for organic farming
By Jim Downing - Bee Staff Writer
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, June 17, 2007
Next time you see an organic tomato at half-again the price of a conventional one, blame weeds.
More than diseases or hungry insects, weeds account for the high cost of organic crops, farmers and industry experts say. Weeds crowd plants, steal nutrients and cut yields.
Conventional farmers can fight weeds with a menu of proven herbicides. But organic growers rely on hand labor, delicate plowing between rows, even spraying vinegar -- whatever they can come up with.
It all adds to the cost of that tomato in the store.
If the price comes down a few years from now, there's a a good chance Pam Marrone will have had something to do with it.
For 17 years, the Davis-based scientist and entrepreneur has scoured the world for the biopesticides made by microorganisms that live on plants and in the soil.
Marrone concentrates these natural chemicals into products that fight weeds, insects and diseases and, ideally, cut the cost of growing organic crops.
With that vision, Marrone has built a string of three biopesticide companies in Davis: Entotech Inc., AgraQuest and now Marrone Organic Innovations. Her entrepreneurial achievement has won her a reputation as a leading innovator in the $600 million biopesticide industry.
Thomas Holtzer, a Colorado State University entomologist who co-directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western regional pest management program, said Marrone has been a pioneer in turning the promise of biopesticides into money-making commercial operations.
