Alan Guebert is an Illinois farm journalist.
The seed industry’s interbreeding has been so varied and so rapid this year, farmers will find themselves in pollen-laden fog trying to sort out whom they are dealing with when they buy next year’s seed. The fuel for most of this change is biotechnology. Mycogen and Monsanto, two firms which had little presence in the seed industry just five years ago, are the chief protagonists in this biotech binge. They are roiling what for decades has been a staid, gentlemanly business. Their weapons of choice are electron microscopes and lawyers.
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A year ago, Pioneer Hi-Bred International forked over $51 million (U.S.) for 13.5 percent ownership of Mycogen and a 10-year “research collaboration” between the two companies to genetically engineer insect-resistant crops. Pioneer wants access to Mycogen’s hot-performing Bt gene. But Pioneer hedged its bet with Mycogen because it bought into Monsanto’s Bt corn magic, also.
For its part, Mycogen formed a strategic alliance with chemical giant DowElanco last January. In the deal, Dow received 46 percent of Mycogen, and Mycogen received $26.4 million in cash and Dow’s United Agri-Seeds line.
So, Pioneer has access to both Mycogen and Monsanto’s Bt technology, but Dow owns a major stake in Mycogen, which itself now owns an expanded seed line that eventually will compete with Pioneer.
But wait, this confusion only gets more confusing. Monsanto has been hustling for more than a decade to make biotech the farm frontier of the future. Its initial product, bovine somatotropin, has been by all accounts (except Monsanto’s, of course) a market bust. But its seed technology appears golden. In fact, this ag chemical company is the axis on which the seed industry now spins.
In April, Monsanto paid $150 million for Agracetus, a subsidiary of W.R. Grace & Co. that holds virtually all the patents on transgenic cotton. In July, the St. Louis firm wrote a check for AgriPro Seeds Inc.’s wheat germ plasm and folded it into its own HybriTech wheat line.
Monsanto struck again when it bought the premier soybean seed company, Asgrow Agronomics. Asgrow, married to Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans, could quickly become a soybean-seed-selling gorilla. Even as all this “strategic” dancing was going on, Monsanto sued Mycogen and Ciba-Geigy last March over alleged Bt patent infringements. (Mycogen sued Monsanto, unsuccessfully, in May 1995, over Bt patents.)
Late last winter Ciba-Geigy, owner of Ciba Seeds, and Sandoz, parent of Northrup-King, merged to form, among other things, Novartis Seeds. The merger of these Swiss companies is straightforward, except that Ciba has a Bt deal with Mycogen and N-K has a Bt alliance with Monsanto.
DeKalb Genetics, the number two U.S. seed corn seller, which has Bt patents and shares its Bt magic with Monsanto through licences, sold 40 percent of its common stock for $170 million to (surprise!) Monsanto early last March.
For the record then, Pioneer owns a chunk of present and future seed technology from Monsanto and Mycogen, which in turn, have sued or are suing each other.
Ciba, half of the new Ciba/N-K Norvartis seed company, is being sued by Monsanto, which licenses its Bt biotech to Ciba’s new bride, N-K.
DeKalb, whose 40-percent owner is Monsanto, is suing Pioneer, N-K, Ciba, Mycogen and seemingly every other ag firm which orders seed corn hats by the gross. At stake, say market analysts, are major pieces of what will be an estimated $20 billion biotech seed market by 2010.
And where do farmers fit in? That’s the only part of this incestuous mess which is clear; the $20 billion will be your money.
That excludes legal fees, of course. Little doubt you’ll pay for those, too.
