The majority of all U.S. seeds are provided by four companies, which some experts say has become a pressing national security issue.
For decades, American farmers relied on a diverse patchwork of seed companies to grow the nation’s food supply.
That landscape of thousands of small suppliers began narrowing with a quiet wave of mergers in the 1990s, and ultimately ended with a handful of multinational giants.
Today, a majority of the seed supply for nearly every major row crop planted across the country is consolidated in the hands of four global companies: Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta Group, and BASF.
Between 50 and 60 percent of the world’s seed supply is owned by these four companies, according to a May report from Land and Climate Review. Between 2018 and 2020, Bayer and Corteva accounted for more than half of all U.S. retail seed sales for corn, soybeans, and cotton, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Farmers, legislators, and national security analysts warn that this corporate concentration in the first link of America’s food chain is leaving farmers with fewer choices amid higher input costs and concerns over food security.
Some farmers now describe seed purchasing as less of a transaction and more of a licensing arrangement. Instead of buying seeds and owning them, growers are paying steadily rising annual fees to access patented genetic traits and packages—seeds they cannot save, replant, or breed into other varieties without permission from seed companies.
At the same time, plant breeding programs have steadily declined, leaving most research and innovation in the hands of the Big Four seed companies.
In July, the USDA released its National Farm Security Action Plan, which designated domestic agriculture a national security concern.
The plan “makes clear that USDA is taking decisive action to defend American agriculture from foreign adversaries and other emerging threats,” a USDA spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
When asked how the plan will strengthen domestic food security, the spokesperson said the agency is “identifying critical supply chain deficiencies—like fertilizers, chemicals, and minerals—and tightening import controls to block restricted goods from entering the country.”
The spokesperson added, “This historic plan strengthens research security through a new process to make certain all research funded by USDA is protected from foreign influence, prevents collaboration with countries of concern or other foreign adversaries, and ensures taxpayer funds directly benefit American farmers.”
At a July press conference announcing the plan’s release, White House senior trade counselor Peter Navarro highlighted a significant aspect: foreign ownership of seed companies.
Only one of the Big Four seed providers is an American company. Although all four corporations have an international presence, including in the United States, only Corteva—which emerged after the split of DowDuPont—is headquartered in America.
Meanwhile, Syngenta Group has faced scrutiny in recent months due to its links to the Chinese Communist Party and the amount of farmland it owns in the United States. While the company’s Syngenta Seeds division has its North American headquarters near Chicago, Syngenta Group is owned by Chinese state-controlled ChemChina.
“Syngenta. Well what is that? It’s a seed company … seeds really can be the revolution that keeps the world fed. And China now owns a key part of that,” Navarro said.
“We are indeed in a new world where kinetic warfare is not the first choice of our rivals anymore.”
