News

Monsanto looking for synergies with other companies

The leader of Monsanto’s state and local government affairs says agribusinesses have to respond to the lower commodities prices by considering consolidation. Duane Simpson tells Brownfield Ag News that Monsanto is looking for synergies, “For Monsanto, when we were looking at Syngenta, for example, we were looking at their research capabilities around crop protection with our research capabilities around data science, biologicals and biotechnology and seed breeding – and finding ways to leverage the two of those together to find the best solution to problems for farmers at the lowest incremental cost for the R & D.” Syngenta has rebuffed several offers by Monsanto to buy the Swiss company.

Simpson says consolidation has to happen in agribusiness, “Obviously, there’s been news with a couple of our competitors recently and we expect that you’re going to see more attempts to consolidate and we’re looking forward to seeing what that looks like in the coming months. I don’t have anything specific about where we’re at with negotiations with any of the companies.” Late last week, Dow Chemical and DuPont agreed to merge.

Simpson is the outgoing chairman of the Missouri Agribusiness Association, MO-AG, and spoke with Brownfield at their recent annual meeting alongside the MU Extension Crop Management Conference in Columbia, Missouri.