Acquisitions and mergers become more common during market downturns, and the most recent downturn of agricultural prices has triggered a slew of company changes. Here we’ve listed some of the more recent and larger companies jockeying for position in the marketplace.
Winfield US (the seed, crop input and precision ag arm of Land O’Lakes cooperative) and Southern States Cooperative signed a letter of intent to enter into a supply agreement, bringing operational support and the WinField portfolio to new customers. The intent is for Winfield US to supply crop input requirements to the Southern States network of 1,200 retail locations across 23 states serving 200,000 farmers.
Alltech acquired Masterfeeds Inc., headquartered in London, Ontario, Canada.
John Deere bought out Precision Planting and Monosem, the European market leader in precision planters, which has four facilities in France and two in the U.S.
Syngenta acquired Ag Connections out of Murray, Kentucky, which provides farm management software.
Pinnacle Agriculture Holdings acquired eight regional seed companies in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota and Illinois.
Merck Animal Health acquired Harrisvaccines, which was awarded the first USDA contract to produce the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) and more recently developed a vaccine receiving conditional approval to combat avian influenza.
Zoetis acquired Pharmaq, effectively expanding into the aquaculture market with fish and salmon products.
And the USDA released its annual listing of the largest co-ops in the U.S., which include (in order of size):
- CHS
- Dairy Farmers of America
- Land O’Lakes
- Growmark
- Ag Processing Inc.
- California Dairies
- United Suppliers
- Northwest Dairy Association
- Associated Milk Producers Inc.
- Southern States Cooperative
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Lynn Jaynes
- Editor
- Progressive Forage Grower
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