Carl’s Thoughts on the Bayer-Monsanto Merger
Barack Obama was still President. Hillary Clinton had a clear and unsurmountable lead in the polls to win the 2016 election. The Chicago Cubs were leading their division, but everyone knows they won’t win the World Series. Samsung Galaxy phones were recalled because they were catching on fire in people’s pants.
I had more hair!
And Bayer Crop Science agreed to buy Monsanto for $66 billion dollars. (Now adjusted to $62.5B)
It all seems so long ago.
Talk about long engagements! After more than a year and a half, Bayer’s buyout of Monsanto received the blessing of the US Department of Justice and will soon be consummated.
What does this mean for farmers in this region?
In the short term, not very much. Most of the Monsanto people will remain in place while Bayer sorts out what kind of personnel changes they will make: Will they combine the Monsanto and Bayer sales and technical teams? Probably but not right away.
Meanwhile, at Peterson Farms Seed, we do not see any significant changes in our product lineup or direction.
We will continue to be the LibertyLink leader, now working with BASF instead of Bayer. But the entire seed and trait team that we worked with at Bayer now works for BASF—they even work in the same building.
We will continue to take the lead in bringing new traits like Enlist (now working with Corteva, rather than Dow) and LibertyLink GT27.
We will continue to support Roundup Ready 2 Xtend and Roundup Ready 2 Yield.
And we will continue to be fiercely independent, customer focused and owned and operated right here in the upper Midwest!
