In my case, we've never been able to attract much money from companies. Because it was a small crop--peas and lentils--nobody was prepared to invest. However, we had some forward-thinking farmers who set up an organization. They taxed themselves and put the checkoff dollars into genetics. To date they've probably spent 50% of their research money on genetics. In exchange, we gave them the commercialization rights to all the genetics. That has created a different scenario, which is maybe unique. Maybe asparagus has the same thing, but in the grain industry, this is unique on a global scale.
When the issue of herbicide tolerance came in, transgenics was a difficult thing for our traders. We started on transgenics, but we stopped because of this difficulty. We did it for about three years. We were able to do it, but instead we went in favour of something that was basically mutation-based. We knew that a variation existed for herbicide tolerance in the natural population, so we were able to develop herbicide-tolerant lentils. In that case, we came to an arrangement with the corporation, so now we, together with the farmers and the corporation, are partners in this. In fact, we receive royalties, but not on seed. We receive them on herbicide use.
There are many creative ways to do things if you understand biology and have willing partners.