On Tuesday, the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) released its latest insights on company market shares for U.S. corn, soybeans and cotton retail seed from 2018 to 2020.
Two companies – Bayer and Corteva – recorded more than half of all U.S. retail seed sales during the three-year span. That is the most recent period for which market estimates are available, according to Keith Fuglie, USDA economist, who prepared the brief report.
Learn more about the two companies’ marketplace rivalry here: Is Corteva Now Beating Out Bayer? Company’s Market Share Surges On Soybeans
From Six To Four Leading Firms Today
According to USDA, as the seed industry has become more concentrated, fewer firms are in the marketplace and dominate supply and sales.
Today, four firms (Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina’s Syngenta Group, and BASF) control the majority of crop seed and agricultural chemical sales in the U.S.
“In 2015, six firms led global markets for seeds and agricultural chemicals,” Fuglie writes. “The concentration can be traced to the expansion of intellectual property rights to private companies for seed improvements in the 1970s and 1980s, creating an incentive to research and develop new biotechnology seed traits and seed varieties.
“As biotechnology advanced, companies created genetically modified (GM) varieties of seed, such as herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant corn, soybeans and cotton,” Fuglie adds. “Mergers occurred between companies that produced and sold pesticides (primarily herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides), seed treatments (seed coatings to protect against insects or fungi), crop seeds, and seed traits. As a result, the U.S. crop seed sector has become highly integrated with agricultural chemicals and more concentrated.”
Fuglie’s comments are available in their entirety here.
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