Over the course of its 115-year history, Monsanto has continually reinvented itself through technology and business mergers, marketing products that have both transformed agriculture and fueled heated controversy. Here's a brief glimpse at how the St. Louis-area company grew from modest beginnings into a global biotech giant over the years.
1901:
Monsanto was founded as an independent venture of John Queeny, an employee of Meyer Brothers Drug Company, in 1901. Queeny originally set out to produce saccharin, an artificial sweetener, and named the company Monsanto after his wife, Olga Monsanto Queeny.
1917:
Often presenting itself under the name Monsanto Chemical Works, the company's early emphasis encompassed a wide range of chemicals and drugs that were completely unrelated to agriculture. For instance, Monsanto began producing aspirin in 1917, and continued to make the active ingredient for the drug – which it sold to producers of aspirin for retail sale – until late in the 20th century.
1940s:
Monsanto did not make its initial foray into agriculture until the mid-1940s, when it marketed Santobane, a pesticide that targeted corn borers and other insect pests.
1955:
The rise of oil-derived petrochemicals led Monsanto to purchase Lion Oil Company in 1955. Among that company's line of products was ammonia intended for use in ammonium nitrate fertilizer. For Monsanto, this acquisition marked the start of a new phase of investment in chemical fertilizers, which became a main part of the company's economic foundation. The company's reliance on fertilizers eventually ebbed by the 1980s, as it gravitated toward other applications of agricultural science.
1965:
From 1965 to 1969, Monsanto was one of nine contractors to produce the defoliating herbicide known as “Agent Orange” for the U.S. government to use in the Vietnam War. Agent Orange's chemical mixture included toxic substances such as dioxin and continues to be a health concern for veterans who were exposed to it.
1969:
After beginning product development and testing in the mid-1960s, Monsanto started selling the herbicide, Lasso, in 1969. The weed killer was a best-selling corn and soy herbicide in the U.S. for more than two decades.
1970:
Only a year after Lasso's release, Monsanto developed Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide. The highly effective herbicide would evolve into one of the company's marquee products – especially once aided by future innovations described below – and remains widely used today.
1983:
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Monsanto was starting its push into biotechnology, becoming the first company to alter plant cells in a laboratory and to grow plants from genetically modified cells – feats it achieved in 1983. Field tests of genetically modified plants would begin later in the decade.
1994:
After undergoing years of regulatory review, Monsanto finally markets its first biotech product – a hormone known as BST, to be injected into dairy cows to boost milk production.
1996:
The company begins to orient its portfolio around biotech seeds, as Roundup Ready Soybeans are introduced, providing farmers with seeds genetically engineered to be resistant to Roundup and other glyphosate herbicides. Roundup-resistant technology enables farmers to apply herbicide without worrying about damaging their crops, but has also led to concerns about “superweeds” that develop glyphosate resistance of their own.
1997:
Roundup Ready Cotton and Roundup Ready Canola are introduced.
1998:
Roundup Ready Corn is introduced.
2000:
Monsanto undergoes a merger with the Pharmacia Corporation, a pharmaceutical company that in 2003 would itself become a subsidiary of Pfizer, Inc.
2015:
The company continues to roll out seeds engineered with new herbicide resistance, releasing dicamba-resistant cotton. Dicamba-resistant soybeans would be introduced in 2016. For each product, however, the corresponding dicamba-based herbicide still has yet to be approved.
2016:
Monsanto's board agrees to sell company for $66 billion to German pharmaceutical company, Bayer.
