Blog by Kurt Boudonck, the Greenhouse Group Leader for Bayer CropScience. Kurt conducts crop plant experiments and hosts greenhouse tours: "I grew up on a small farm in Belgium. On our small farm, I was fortunate to have my own vegetable garden, and next to my little vegetable garden my family grew many acres of corn, wheat, grass or sugar beets meant for animal feed.
So, from a young age I was allowed to learn first-hand what it takes to grow your own food. After school I was always busy weeding my garden, watering the plants, tilling the soil, hand-removing insects that threatened to destroy my plants in my garden, and watching my family do the same on our acres of crops.
While I understood the hard work it took to grow our own food, the part of the process I didn’t understand at that time was what was inside the food – how different varieties of tomatoes were made and what made our neighbor’s corn different from the corn we grew."