Who Controls Seeds and Pesticides? From BASF’s Biotech Retreat to the Mega-Mergers and Corteva’s 2026 Split

In 2016, a headline celebrated a “victory”: a major GMO company had been forced to cut its biotechnology workforce in half and close test sites around the world. The company was BASF, the German chemical giant, which announced it would cut about half of the roughly 700 staff in its plant biotechnology unit and close field testing sites in India, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. Around the same time, Monsanto announced it would cut thousands of jobs and close research centers.

The cuts were real, but they did not mark the retreat of agricultural biotechnology. Within two years, the industry went through the largest wave of mergers in its history, leaving four companies in control of most of the world’s commercial seeds and pesticides. A decade later, the industry is reshaping itself again: Bayer is trying to close out its Roundup litigation with a multibillion-dollar settlement, and Corteva is splitting its seed and pesticide businesses into two companies. This article explains what happened, why it matters for farmers and food, and where the industry stands in 2026.

What Actually Happened in 2015–2016

As The Chemical Engineer reported, BASF said it would cut about half of its 700 plant biotechnology staff, with around 180 positions lost in Europe and 140 in North America. Field testing sites in India, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii would close, and research sites in North Carolina, Iowa, and Germany would shrink. The company said it would discontinue research areas requiring the greatest investment of time and money, such as rice yield and fungal resistance in corn, while continuing work on omega-3 fatty acids in canola and herbicide tolerance and fungal resistance in soybeans.

The move followed an earlier retreat. In 2012, BASF had already moved the headquarters of its plant science business from Germany to the United States and stopped developing GM products for the European market, citing a lack of acceptance by consumers, farmers, and politicians in much of Europe.

Monsanto was cutting too. The company announced in October 2015 that it would eliminate about 2,600 jobs, and in January 2016 it raised the total to 3,600, about 16 percent of its workforce, according to BioSpace. It also closed several research facilities, consolidating work in the St. Louis area.

Why the cuts happened

Low crop prices. After record highs around 2012, prices for corn, soybeans, and other commodities fell sharply. Lower farm incomes meant farmers spent less on premium seed and chemicals, and companies’ sales fell.

The cost of developing new traits. Bringing a new GM trait to market requires years of research and regulatory testing in multiple countries. Industry estimates have put the total cost of discovering, developing, and authorizing a new trait in the range of a hundred million dollars or more. Companies cut projects with uncertain payoffs.

European opposition. With most of Europe closed to GM cultivation, companies saw limited returns from European research and moved or ended it.

Merger preparations. The industry was on the verge of consolidation, and companies were trimming costs ahead of anticipated deals.

Opponents of GM crops celebrated the cuts as evidence that public pressure was working. Supporters saw them as a loss of research capacity, particularly for traits aimed at crops and regions that large companies had not prioritized. Both readings understated what came next.

The Merger Wave

Between 2015 and 2018, the six largest seed and agrochemical companies, often called the Big Six, merged into four:

Dow and DuPont merged in 2017, then split into three companies. Their combined agriculture business became Corteva Agriscience, an independent public company from 2019.

ChemChina acquired Syngenta, the Swiss crop protection and seed company, in 2017 in a deal valued at about $43 billion. In 2020, Syngenta was combined with other Chinese state-owned agricultural assets to form Syngenta Group.

Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 for about $63 billion, the largest deal in the industry’s history. To win antitrust approval, Bayer sold its own seed business and certain herbicides, including its glufosinate brand, to BASF. Ironically, the deal turned BASF, which had cut back its own biotech research two years earlier, into a major seed company.

The result was a Big Four: Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta Group, and BASF. Analyses such as the 2017 “Too Big to Feed” report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems warned that these firms would control the majority of the global commercial seed and agrochemical markets.

Company	Formed from	Main strengths	2026 status
Bayer Crop Science	Bayer + Monsanto (2018)	Corn and soybean seeds and traits, glyphosate, vegetable seeds	Seeking to resolve Roundup litigation through class settlement
Corteva Agriscience	Dow + DuPont agriculture (2017–19)	Pioneer seeds, Enlist trait system, crop protection	Splitting into separate seed and crop protection companies
Syngenta Group	ChemChina + Syngenta (2017), Sinochem assets (2020)	Crop protection, seeds, fertilizers	State-owned; major presence in China and globally
BASF Agricultural Solutions	BASF + Bayer divestitures (2018)	Crop protection, canola and vegetable seeds, glufosinate	Pursuing a separate listing of its agricultural business

Bayer’s Roundup Problem

For Bayer, the Monsanto acquisition brought not only the world’s leading seed business but also tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. After paying about $10 billion in 2020 to settle many pending claims, Bayer continued to face new suits and some large jury verdicts.

In February 2026, Fox Business reported that Bayer proposed a $7.25 billion nationwide class settlement, filed in St. Louis, to create a long-term compensation program for people who say they developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after Roundup exposure. The company raised its litigation reserves to nearly $12 billion and expected about $6 billion in legal payouts in 2026 alone, enough to push free cash flow negative for the year. A Missouri judge granted preliminary approval in March 2026. In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell that federal law preempts state-law claims seeking cancer warnings beyond those approved by the EPA, which Bayer had called essential to containing the litigation.

Alongside the litigation, Bayer has been carrying out a sweeping reorganization since 2024 aimed at cutting management layers and costs, eliminating thousands of positions across the company.

Corteva Splits Seeds From Pesticides

Corteva is taking a different path. DTN reported in October 2025 that Corteva’s board had approved a plan to split the company into two independent publicly traded companies, one for crop protection and one for seeds. Corteva reported $16.9 billion in sales in 2024, of which about $9.5 billion came from seeds and nearly $7.4 billion from crop protection. DTN noted that one rationale for separating the businesses could be shielding the seed business from liabilities associated with crop protection products, as Bayer’s Roundup experience illustrated.

In its first-quarter 2026 filing with the SEC, Corteva disclosed a restructuring program approved in March 2026, mainly workforce reductions, with expected severance-related charges of about $70 million to $80 million, to prepare for the separation. Industry reporting indicates the company expects to complete the separation in the fourth quarter of 2026.

How the Seed Business Works

Understanding consolidation requires understanding how seeds reach farmers. For crops such as corn, most farmers in industrialized countries plant hybrid seed, produced by crossing two parent lines. Hybrids offer yield advantages but do not breed true, so farmers buy new seed each year. For soybeans, cotton, and canola, varieties can be replanted, but genetically engineered traits are patented and protected by contracts that prohibit saving seed.

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed those protections in Bowman v. Monsanto in 2013, ruling unanimously that a farmer who planted and harvested patented soybeans from commodity grain infringed Monsanto’s patent, because patent exhaustion does not permit making new copies of a patented invention by planting it. The decision confirmed that patented seed traits cannot be legally reproduced without permission.

The largest companies both sell their own branded seed and license their traits to hundreds of smaller seed companies, which combine licensed traits with their own or regional genetics. This licensing system allows many independent seed brands to exist, but it also means that most commercial GM seed, whatever the brand, carries traits owned by a few firms.

The Crop Protection Market

The pesticide side of the industry works differently. New active ingredients take many years and large investments to discover, test, and register, and are protected by patents for a limited time. Once patents expire, other companies can sell generic versions, often manufactured in China and India, which have become major global producers of agricultural chemicals. Glyphosate, for example, has been off patent for decades and is produced by many companies worldwide.

Competition from generics puts pressure on the major companies to develop new active ingredients, biological products, and proprietary formulations, and to link chemicals to seed traits. The emergence of herbicide-resistant weeds has driven demand for new herbicide-tolerance systems, such as crops tolerant to dicamba, 2,4-D, and glufosinate, which have themselves raised concerns, including drift damage from dicamba to neighboring crops.

How Mergers Are Reviewed

Large agricultural mergers require approval from competition authorities in many jurisdictions, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the European Commission, China, Brazil, and others. Reviewers examine whether a deal would reduce competition in specific products, such as seeds for particular crops, traits, or classes of herbicides, and in research and innovation. They can block deals or require divestitures. In the Bayer–Monsanto case, regulators required Bayer to sell major businesses, which went to BASF. In the Dow–DuPont and ChemChina–Syngenta deals, the companies also divested certain crop protection products. Critics argue that divestitures do not fully restore competition, especially in research; regulators argue they address the most direct overlaps.

Farmers’ Perspectives

Farmers’ views on consolidation are mixed. Many value the performance of modern hybrids and traits and the agronomic support large companies provide. At the same time, farm groups have raised concerns about rising seed costs, limited choices in some regions, and the difficulty of finding high-yielding conventional varieties. Surveys of farmers and testimony in federal competition proceedings have highlighted worries about bargaining power and transparency in pricing. For farmers who grow non-GM or organic crops, access to suitable seed from independent breeders is a particular concern, as discussed in our article on organic farmers and contamination risks.

Why Concentration Matters

Critics of consolidation, including farm groups, antitrust scholars, and some policymakers, raise several concerns.

Seed prices. Prices for seeds of major crops such as corn, soybeans, and cotton rose substantially in the decades after GM traits were introduced, as companies bundled traits and charged technology fees. Supporters say prices reflect the value of improved genetics and traits; critics say limited competition allows higher margins.

Farmer choice. As companies merged and smaller seed firms were acquired, farmers in some regions found fewer independent options, especially for non-GM or conventional varieties of major crops.

Bundling of seeds and chemicals. Herbicide-tolerant traits link seed choices to specific herbicides, encouraging farmers to buy both from the same company. Critics argue this strengthens market power; companies argue it offers integrated solutions.

Innovation. Fewer companies may mean fewer independent research programs. Economists debate whether consolidation reduces innovation by limiting competition or increases it by pooling resources for expensive research.

Data and digital agriculture. The largest companies also run digital farming platforms that collect data from farms, raising questions about who controls and profits from farm data.

In the United States, these concerns led to federal reviews of competition in agricultural inputs, including seeds, and to calls for stronger antitrust enforcement in agriculture.

The Industry’s Case

The companies and their supporters argue that scale is necessary. Developing new seed traits and crop protection chemicals takes many years and requires regulatory approval in multiple countries, at costs that smaller firms struggle to bear. They point to continued investment in research, including new herbicide-tolerance systems, insect resistance, gene editing, biological products, and digital tools. They also note that thousands of smaller seed companies still operate, often licensing traits from the larger firms, and that farmers continue to adopt new products because they deliver value.

Antitrust regulators in the United States, European Union, and elsewhere approved the mergers, though often with conditions requiring divestitures intended to preserve competition, such as Bayer’s sale of assets to BASF.

Alternatives and New Entrants

Not all agricultural innovation comes from the Big Four. Public universities and agricultural research systems continue to breed varieties, especially for crops and regions that large companies do not prioritize. International agricultural research centers develop varieties for developing countries. Gene editing has lowered some development costs, enabling startups and smaller companies to bring products to market, particularly where regulators treat certain edited crops more like conventionally bred ones. Organic and independent seed companies serve farmers seeking non-GM and regionally adapted varieties. Whether these players can meaningfully counterbalance the largest firms remains uncertain.

What It Means for Food and Farming

For farmers, the industry’s structure affects seed and chemical costs, the choices available, and the support and data services they rely on. For consumers, the effects are indirect but real: the traits and chemicals developed by a few companies shape how most corn, soybeans, cotton, and canola are grown, which in turn influences food prices, pesticide use, and environmental outcomes. Litigation over products such as Roundup shows how corporate decisions about products and science can reverberate for decades.

The 2016 headline treated job cuts at one company as a victory. The longer story shows that the industry did not shrink so much as consolidate, and that the most important questions now involve competition, accountability, and how innovation can serve a wider range of farmers and crops.

What to Watch

Corteva’s separation. Whether the split is completed in late 2026, and how the separate seed and crop protection companies perform.

Bayer’s settlement. Whether the Roundup class settlement wins final court approval and resolves most remaining claims.

BASF’s agricultural business. BASF has announced plans to prepare its agricultural division for a possible separate stock listing.

Gene editing rules. How regulators in the U.S., EU, and elsewhere treat gene-edited crops will affect whether smaller companies can compete.

Antitrust policy. Whether future deals in agricultural inputs face tougher scrutiny.

What Happened to BASF’s Biotech Ambitions

BASF’s path illustrates how quickly the industry shifted. In the 2000s, BASF Plant Science invested in GM crops for European and global markets, including the Amflora potato, engineered for industrial starch, which won EU approval for cultivation in 2010 after years of controversy. Facing opposition in Europe, BASF moved its plant biotech headquarters to the United States in 2012 and stopped developing GM products for the European market. Its 2016 restructuring then cut back further. Yet just two years later, by acquiring Bayer’s seed and trait businesses, BASF became one of the world’s major seed companies. The company’s experience shows that strategic retreats in one area can be followed by expansion through acquisition when market conditions and regulatory demands change.

Innovation Under Consolidation

A central question is whether consolidation helps or hurts innovation. The largest companies spend billions of dollars each year on research and development, and they argue that only firms of their scale can afford the long timelines and regulatory costs of bringing new traits and chemicals to market worldwide. Critics counter that fewer competitors mean fewer independent research directions, more focus on the most profitable crops and markets, and less incentive to develop products that might compete with existing lines. Research priorities for crops grown mainly by poor farmers, such as cassava, sorghum, millet, and many vegetables, often depend on public and philanthropic funding rather than private companies.

Gene editing may shift this balance. Because some edited crops face lighter regulation and lower development costs, smaller companies and public institutions have been able to develop products, such as non-browning produce and crops with improved nutrition or disease resistance. Whether these new entrants can grow independently, or will be acquired by the largest firms, will shape the industry’s future.

Global Reach: Beyond the United States and Europe

Consolidation has global consequences. The Big Four sell seeds and chemicals in nearly every major farming country, and their decisions about which crops, traits, and products to develop influence agriculture in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Brazil and Argentina, major GM crop producers, rely heavily on these companies’ traits and chemicals. China’s ownership of Syngenta Group gives it a significant position in global agricultural inputs and has supported China’s own move toward approving GM corn and soybeans. In Africa, governments and donors are weighing how much to rely on multinational seed companies versus public breeding and local seed enterprises.

At the same time, regional seed companies and generic pesticide manufacturers remain important in many developing countries, and national research institutions continue to release varieties adapted to local conditions. The balance between global firms and local players differs widely from country to country.

What Consumers Can Watch For

For consumers, the structure of the seed and pesticide industry can feel remote, but it affects what is grown and how. Public debates over glyphosate, dicamba drift, pollinator-harming insecticides, and GM labeling all involve products made by these companies. Consumers who want to influence these issues can follow regulatory comment periods, support research and farming systems they value through their purchases, and pay attention to how litigation and regulatory decisions shape the products available to farmers. Understanding who controls agricultural inputs helps make sense of news about food, farming, and the environment.

Lessons From a Decade of Change

Several lessons stand out from the decade since the 2016 headlines. Industry downturns can accelerate consolidation rather than shrink an industry. Antitrust approval with divestitures reshuffles assets but leaves markets concentrated. Product liability, as with Roundup, can reshape corporate strategy for years. And companies are now experimenting with separating seeds from chemicals, partly to manage risk. Each of these trends affects what farmers can buy, at what price, and with what support, and they deserve continued public attention.

Questions Farmers Can Ask Seed Suppliers

Farmers navigating a concentrated market can protect their interests by asking suppliers clear questions. What traits and technology fees are included in the price, and are conventional or lower-trait versions available? What are the license terms, including restrictions on seed saving? What independent yield trial data, such as university variety trials, support the variety’s performance in my region? What herbicide programs does the trait require, and what are the risks of drift or resistance? Comparing several suppliers, including independent seed companies, and consulting local extension services help farmers make choices based on performance rather than marketing.

Further Reading

Readers who want to follow the industry can track company filings with securities regulators, which disclose restructuring, litigation, and business strategy; reporting from agricultural trade publications; competition authorities’ merger decisions; and analyses from both industry groups and independent researchers. Comparing sources with different perspectives gives the most complete picture of how consolidation affects farming.

Public agricultural universities also publish independent variety trial results each year, comparing seeds from many companies under local conditions. These trials are among the most useful tools farmers have for evaluating products in a concentrated market, and they depend on continued public funding.

Extension specialists at land-grant universities can also help farmers interpret trial data and weigh trait packages against their specific weed, pest, and market conditions.

Key Terms

Big Four: Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta Group, and BASF, the companies that dominate global commercial seeds and agrochemicals.

Trait licensing: Agreements allowing seed companies to sell varieties containing patented genetic traits owned by another company.

Divestiture: The sale of business units required by competition regulators as a condition for approving a merger.

Spin-off: Separating part of a company into a new independent company owned by existing shareholders.

Class settlement: A legal agreement resolving claims of a group of people with similar claims, subject to court approval.

The Bottom Line

The 2016 cuts at BASF and Monsanto were symptoms of a downturn and a prelude to consolidation, not the end of agricultural biotechnology. Today four companies dominate the global market, and the industry continues to reorganize: Bayer is seeking to contain its Roundup liabilities, and Corteva is splitting its seed and pesticide businesses. For farmers and consumers, the key questions are whether competition, innovation, and accountability can be maintained in an industry this concentrated, and how public policy, from antitrust to research funding, can support a wider range of choices.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which company cut half its GMO workforce?

BASF announced in 2016 that it would cut about half of its roughly 700 plant biotechnology staff and close field testing sites in India, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii.

Did the GMO industry shrink?

Some companies cut jobs and research in 2015–2016 amid low crop prices, but the industry then consolidated through major mergers, and GM crop area continued to grow.

Who are the Big Four seed and pesticide companies?

Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta Group, and BASF.

Why is Corteva splitting?

Corteva says separating seeds and crop protection will create two more focused companies. Analysts have also noted that separation could shield the seed business from liabilities tied to pesticides.

What is Bayer’s Roundup settlement?

In February 2026, Bayer proposed a class settlement of up to $7.25 billion, paid over up to 21 years, to resolve current and future Roundup cancer claims. A Missouri judge granted preliminary approval in March 2026.

Does consolidation raise seed prices?

Seed prices for major crops have risen substantially since the 1990s. Economists debate how much reflects market power versus the value of improved genetics and traits.

References

1. The Chemical Engineer. BASF slashes plant biotech research. 2016. thechemicalengineer.com
2. BioSpace. Monsanto Terminates Another 1,000 Employees As Part of Restructuring Plan. January 7, 2016. biospace.com
3. IPES-Food. Too Big to Feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, consolidation and concentration of power in the agri-food sector. 2017. ipes-food.org
4. DTN. Corteva Confirms Split to Separate Seed, Crop Protection Business Units. October 1, 2025. dtnpf.com
5. Corteva, Inc. Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. sec.gov
6. Fertilizer Daily. Corteva plans to split seed and crop protection units into two public companies in Q4 2026. February 2026. fertilizerdaily.com
7. Fox Business. Bayer proposes $7.25B plan to settle Roundup cancer lawsuits. February 2026. foxbusiness.com

Last updated: October 1, 2026