For decades, American farmers relied on a diverse patchwork of seed companies to grow the nation’s food supply.
That landscape of thousands of small suppliers began narrowing with a quiet wave of mergers in the 1990s, and ultimately ended with a handful of multinational giants.
Today, a majority of the seed supply for nearly every major row crop planted across the country is consolidated in the hands of four global companies: Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta Group, and BASF.
Between 50 and 60 percent of the world’s seed supply is owned by these four companies, according to a May report from Land and Climate Review. Between 2018 and 2020, Bayer and Corteva accounted for more than half of all U.S. retail seed sales for corn, soybeans, and cotton, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)….