consolidation

To satisfy EU regulators, U.S.-based Dow and DuPont offered to sell part of DuPont's crop protection business along with its associated research and development and Dow's business in copolymers and ionomers, said the News Journal. The companies hope to complete their $130 billion merge in the first half of this year.

The Justice Department review of the merger of Dow and DuPont is "pretty far down the road" and the arrival of Donald Trump as president is unlikely to affect the transaction, said DuPont chief executive Ed Breen in a Reuters interview. "I don't think it will have any impact," said Breen, who noted the review is being handled by career civil servants.

Ninety-percent of meal-kit customers unsubscribe within six months of signing up for the service, says Fast Company, after analyzing data gathered by the market-research firm 1010data. The firm’s data indicated that only about half of customers of Blue Apron remain in the program after the first week, with numbers falling off quickly from there. The dropout rate is similar for other meal-kit companies, like Plated and HelloFresh.

With state-owned ChemChina prepared to take over Syngenta, one of the largest seed companies in the world, Senate Judiciary chairman Chuck Grassley wants to know if the Chinese company would invoke sovereign immunity against lawsuits in U.S. courts. "If they fail to answer my questions, it ought to raise a big red flag with our regulators checking the antitrust laws against the mergers," Grassley told reporters according to DTN.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Montana Sen. Jon Tester says the government should deny on antitrust grounds Bayer's proposed $66 billion purchase of Monsanto, given that it would result in a company controlling nearly 30 percent of the world's seed market and a quarter of pesticide sales.

The seed and ag-chemical industry "is seemingly on the precipice of a significant structural transformation," says Senate Judiciary chairman Charles Grassley in remarks written for today's hearing on consolidation in the sector. Five of the "big six" companies are involved in mergers while two Canadian companies are combining to form the world's largest fertilizer company.

Ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on consolidation in the seed and ag chemical sector, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission say they will consider the combined impact of mergers as well as the import of each deal. If they go forward, the mergers would result in three dominant companies in the sector instead of the current six.

Two of the largest seed and agricultural chemical companies of the world, Bayer and Monsanto, will combine in a deal valued at $66 billion. Monsanto chief executive Hugh Grant said the merger, in which Bayer buys Monsanto for cash, will result in "an innovation engine that pairs Bayer’s crop protection portfolio with our world-class seeds and traits and digital agriculture tools to help growers overcome the obstacles of tomorrow."

Two Canadian firms, Potash Corp. and Agrium Inc., announced that they will merge, creating the world's largest crop-nutrient company, according to The Associated Press. The new company will have 20,000 employees, a market value of $36 billion and annual revenue of $20.6 billion. A name will be chosen before the deal closes next year, said the AP.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Glassley of Iowa said he would hold hearings next month on "a wave of consolidation among seed and chemical producers, including the merger of Dow and DuPont," the Des Moines Register reported. The announcement came one day after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved the $43 billion merger of ChemChina and Swiss-based Syngenta, which has significant operations in the United States.

Paris-based Danone SA reached a deal to buy WhiteWave Foods for $10.4 billion, a merger "that would hand it a slice of the fast-growing market for organic food and more than double its North American revenue," said the Wall Street Journal. Organic food is 5 percent of the U.S. food sales, with large annual increases.

The Justice Department should conduct “a careful analysis” of whether the proposed Dow-DuPont merger will create an agro-chemical giant that unfairly dominates seed and pesticide sales, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said in a letter to antitrust regulators.

Monsanto says Bayer isn't offering enough to justify a merger but that it's open to continued talks with the German company. An official at Johns Hopkins' Center for a Livable Future says a merger would "be a real shock to the food system" because of the potential of higher prices to farmers for seeds and agricultural chemicals in a sector undergoing consolidation, reported Marketwatch.

Three big mergers among the world's largest seed and agricultural chemical companies are under way or proposed — Bayer and Monsanto, ChemChina and Syngenta, and Dow and DuPont — creating concerns among growers of fewer choices and higher prices when they go shopping. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Harvest Public Media, “I’m not going to respond directly to particular business transactions."

The Washington think tank, New America, has launched Food & Power, a resource for original investigative reporting and research on food and agriculture. The site will focus “on the ways economic concentration affects farmers, farm and food workers, eaters, and animals, as well as public health and the environment,” says the group.

The USDA would offer at least $75 million a year for the development of regionally adapted plant seeds and livestock breeds at public universities under a bill filed by five senators. Sponsors said regional diversity would make the U.S. food chain more resilient and more productive.