The sun was nearing the horizon as David Brumback left his shop Tuesday night, finishing a day overseeing his 2,800 acre farming operation in southern Cooper County. A fourth generation farmer, Brumback has more to worry about than the unusually wet weather of the past few months and its impact on his crops. Brumback is one of more than 100 other local farmers – many of whom are customers or members of the Pilot Grove Cooperative – who have been named in a Monsanto Co. subpoena requesting five years worth of farm records, including Farm Service Agency reports, and seed, grain and chemical receipts.

Brumback calls himself a loyal Monsanto customer and says he believes the company has good products. But he has a number of issues with the request, from the way it was delivered to what it says about Monsanto’s treatment of its customers.

Sitting at his kitchen table in a house surrounded by corn fields, he laughs a little as he recalls “fishing” with the investigators who showed up at his shop – set back about a mile down a gravel road off Hwy. 135 – in a Ford Expedition asking for his father.

“What do you want with him?” Brumback said he asked. His father, Kenneth, died 11 years ago. After a bit of cat-and-mouse conversation, Brumback said he told the investigators they might “have a hard time” serving his dad with papers. After admitting to being the owner of Brumback Farms, Inc., the investigators instead left Brumback with a pile of legal papers, requesting farm records for the years 2000-2005.

In addition to his father, Brumback said he has heard from other farmers that the private investigators hired by Monsanto tried to serve papers on about 10 other people who are dead. “They just didn’t do their research,” he said. “My dad wasn’t even here to see me harvest our first crop of Round-up Ready Beans – that was in 1997. They were looking for my dad based on records they had from the co-op.”

For the rest of the story, read the Wednesday, July 16 print edition of the BDN.