1. The problem facing Scott Deeter and his company Ventria is that CRC advisory board and California Secretary of Agriculture is not being convinced to allow Ventria start planting genetically modified Rice in California. Even though Deeter and his staff offered numerous concessions to address the concerns of rice farmers and other parties involved, but they still could not get an approval for their project. Deeter and his company Ventria is also having the possible issue of maintaining trust of their sponsors and stake holders.
The company missed two planting seasons and is not making any profit which doesn’t make investors happy, and could eventually lead them to withdraw their capital and invest in other company’s and projects.
2. Members of the company’s board and their organizations collectively provided 85% of the company’s financing. That includes, Dr. Rodriguez the founder, cofounders of Chiron Corp. Dr. William Rutter and Dr. Pablo Valenzuela, William Rutter who is an attorney and venture capitalist, Ron Vogel the president of Great Western Malting and bio-entrepreneur Dr.
Roberto Crea. Also, Thomas Urban, Melvin Booth and David Dwyer joined later.
3.There could be different scenarios: First: stakeholders could get impatient about pouring money in a company that will never see the light of success because of the huge amount of opposition. Second: The board members could eventually decide to move their company outside of California, or maybe moving the planting of Rice fields at least to be outside of CRC regulations.
4. If Ventria decided to employ a political action strategy then I believe they should focus on proving enough research and guarantees that their project will not have the negative bad effect on other Rice crops or humans. They could also argue that their project is very beneficial to the state of california bring in new revenue and state tax. Also they could present the idea that their project will provide many job opportunities and decrease unemployment in the state.
5. The company could have the ultimate option of moving it’s planting operations to outside of California where there are no Rice fields and proper climate.
6. I think Ventria should investigate the possibility of moving the company outside of california and check if they would be able to gain enough profit as they were initially anticipating. I believe the there are other states with lenient laws that would not mind having Ventria operations and Rice fields. The average salaries are usually lower in other states than in California which could also play to their advantage.