Big Ag just became humongous.
On 4 July, Bayer AG, the German multinational pharma company, bought the world’s most controversial agriculture company, Monsanto, in a $66-billion deal that gave Bayer control over a whopping 30% of the global seed market and a quarter of the pesticide market.
The merger, two years in the making, is part of a wave. US’ DowDupont and China’s ChemChina-Syngenta were formed through a merger in 2017. With Bayer-Monsanto (Bayer will later drop the Monsanto tag), 61% of the global seed and pesticide market will be in the hands of just three players.