WHEN: Today, Friday, July 17th
WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk Box"
Following are excerpts from the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant on CNBC's "Squawk Box" (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today. Following are links to video of the interview on CNBC.com: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000398486 and http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000398487.
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
GRANT ON BEING PATIENT
Patience is a finite resource, but as you see I have been at this since 2011. I think there are still miles to go in this, I really do. And the last few weeks, when you get a chance to personally talk to owners in the stock and they say you should get this done and then you look at the backdrop of these demand curves and we're going to hang with this for a while.
GRANT ON GMOs
Twenty years since the first crops were planted in '96, the intensity and use of chemistry has actually declined during that time so growers now are applying less. The next turn in this, the next breakthrough is how you apply less than an acre, how you apply it much more precisely. And I think the Monsanto Syngenta combination completely redefines the industry one more time in how we use chemistry and link it much more intimately to seed.
GRANT ON SYNGENTA
I think the consistency feedback on both sides of the Atlantic. They should be sitting down, they should be engaging. We should be doing this quietly and that does not guarantee success but at least that is how mature business is done. I got a lot of respect for their board and their management, but they need to get real and see if we can get this over the line. I don't understand their reticence.
GRANT ON SYNGENTA BID
In New York there is always this thing on hostile or friendly – there is a lot of bandwidth in there. I like friendly deals. We need their collaboration and there are a lot of miles still to travel in this one before we would think about hostile. I'd like to talk to a real person across a real table. So we got work to do but I'm optimistic.
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