The world’s biggest seed company and the country’s biggest chemical company announced Thursday a cross-licensing deal intended to bring next-generation seeds and chemical mixes to farmers combating increasingly stubborn weeds and insects in the field.
Creve Coeur-based Monsanto Co. and Dow Agrosciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co., said Thursday that Monsanto will allow Dow to use a corn technology Monsanto is developing to kill corn rootworm, a major agricultural pest. In exchange, Dow will give Monsanto access to its new Enlist brand corn technology, which enables crops to survive applications of the chemical 2,4-D.
The deal is the latest move in an emerging pattern that has seen major rivals in agricultural biotechnology license technologies to one another. The existing SmartStax corn product, for example, already contains eight biotechnology traits developed by Dow, Monsanto and Bayer CropScience.
Thursday’s announcement “wasn’t something on our radar, but it’s consistent with trend. We’ve seen quite a bit of collaboration,” Edward Jones analyst Matt Arnold said. “Over time, (Monsanto’s) collaborative mindset toward other developers is definitely constructive, if, at the end of the day, the group brings value.”
Over the past several years, farmers have battled worsening problems in the field, pushing companies to scramble for solutions. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready system, introduced in the mid-1990s, has become the dominant system in agriculture but was so effective and easy that farmers relied almost exclusively on it — which has resulted in resistant weeds.
At a recent conference, Dow Agrosciences chief executive Antonio Galindez said weeds on 65 million acres of American cropland are not being killed by Roundup, or its primary ingredient, glyphosate. That figure represents a 50 percent increase over 2011.
“If you use a single mode of action, you’re going to build resistance,” said Garry Hamlin, a spokesman for Dow, in a recent interview. “The way to stay ahead of that is to use multiple modes of action.”
Over the past three years or so, farmers and researchers have also noticed that insects are becoming resistant to crops that produce insecticides designed to kill corn rootworm.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that corn rootworm was not being “completely controlled” by the technology. Monsanto subsequently agreed to report problems to the agency and to conduct education programs for farmers.
In the agreement announced Thursday, Dow will gain access to Monsanto’s Corn Rootworm III, a new technology that employs a different technology to kill insects.
“Corn Rootworm III provides a breakthrough in terms of a completely new mode of action for below-ground insect control,” wrote Sara Miller, a Monsanto spokeswoman, in an email.
That product is several years away from commercialization. Dow’s 2,4-D technology is awaiting approval by regulators and is expected to be on the market by the end of the year.
Late last month, Monsanto and competitor, DuPont, agreed to settle lawsuits, and, in the process, agreed to allow licensing of each others’ technologies, including a Monsanto-developed technology that allows crops to survive applications of another chemical, dicamba, made by chemical giant BASF.
Environmental and some farm groups have decried the possible approval of 2,4-D and dicamba-tolerant technologies, saying they will increase chemical usage on farmland.
Conventional and organic farmers have expressed particular concerned over the chemicals, which have had a tendency to drift into neighboring fields, threatening non-biotech crops.
Groups are concerned that approval of the technologies not only could lead to cropland being doused in more chemicals but, ultimately, new forms of resistance. One estimate, by researcher Charles Benbrook of Washington State University, says farmers will apply 100 million pounds of 2,4-D on crops by the end of the decade, up from about 27 million pounds now.
Earlier this week, advocacy groups delivered 20,000 signatures to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, calling on it to stop approval of the 2,4-D seed technology.
“These seeds are part of a technology package explicitly designed to facilitate increased herbicide use,” said Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a scientist with Pesticide Action Network, in a statement.
Late last year, the Save our Crops coalition — one of the primary groups calling for a halt to the 2,4-D approvals — withdrew its opposition, but has since called for the agriculture department to require warning labels on older formulas that are known to drift.
