DowDuPont Repositions Its Agricultural Services

DowDuPont is restructuring to enhance efficiencies and improve product offerings in the agriculture sector. Glenneis Kriel asked James Collins, the chief operating officer of the company’s Agricultural Division, about these changes.

- Glenneis Kriel

The seed and agrichemical markets are becoming pretty concentrated. The Agricultural Division of DowDuPont developed out of a merger finalised in September between the Dow Chemical Company and EI DuPont de Nemours & Company, better known as DuPont. In the meantime, merger negotiations between Bayer and Monsanto are making headlines. What’s responsible for this trend?

I think it’s a sign of the times. The global agricultural market situation has been tough for the past few years, forcing companies to become more efficient.

I can’t speak for other companies, but our merger was driven by the rising cost of discovering and developing new products, the need for improved efficiencies, and the opportunity to come together and create more choices and products through our global pipeline.

Merging the two companies allowed us to free up duplicated resources and reinvest the savings in discovering more and improved solutions.

How did the Competition Commission react to the merger announcement?

We had to go through a whole process to get the merger approved in various countries. One of the conditions of the European Commission was that we had to dispose of some of our seed research and development facilities, which we did.

Do you think the reduced competition resulting from these mergers is healthy for the industry as a whole?

To feed more than nine billion people by 2050, the world’s growers will have to double their current productivity per hectare. This goal can only be achieved with the help of innovative technologies, so I think the long-term trends in the industry are healthy.