How a handful of big agriculture companies have taken over food production

The top four pesticide companies control 56% of the global market. Keystone / Anthony Anex

Just a few companies, including Swiss ones, account for a disproportionate share of the market for agricultural inputs like seeds, machinery and chemicals. This stifles competition and raises prices along the supply chain.

In 2025, Swiss-headquartered agribusiness giant Syngenta made $13.7 billion (CHF11.3 billion) from the sale of crop protection products alone, an increase of 4% over the previous year. Buried inside the company’s annual report was a figure that offers a broader glimpse of the strength of the company in the global pesticide market: Syngenta had secured almost 1,800 registrations, re-registration or label extensions of plant protection products in 2025.   

This large portfolio of pesticides has only become more valuable as authorities globally take a tougher stance on pesticide approvals and renewals to protect consumer health and the environment. For example, the European Union has cut the number of authorised active substances in pesticides from over 1,000 to around 500 in the last 25 years. It can take seven to ten years to get a new pesticide approved in the EU; and approval is only valid for a maximum of 15 years at a time.

Those with large product portfolios and the resources to re-register and extend approvals gain a significant advantage over new entrants in the plant protection market. This is reducing competition and leaving farmers with fewer choices.

Who controls what?

“Market concentration in the agricultural sector is very high. Markets for agricultural inputs, such as seeds, pesticides and fertiliser, are dominated globally by a small number of firms. The machinery market is also highly concentrated,” says Robert Finger, a professor of agricultural economics and policy at the Swiss federal technology institute ETH Zurich.

The numbers testify to the concentration of corporate power, as shown in a reportExternal link released by agricultural research collective ETC.

“Ten years ago, the top ten companies in the global commercial seed sector controlled 40% of the market. Today, the top two companies control almost 40% of the market,” Taarini Chopra, a co-author of the ETC report, told Swissinfo.

How did so few companies concentrate agribusiness assets?

The concentration of today’s farm inputs industry is not a recent phenomenon. It can be traced as far back as 150 years ago, according to Jennifer Clapp, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada and author of the book Titans of Industrial Agriculture. Farm equipment manufacturers like John Deere built major industrial companies and were targeted as monopolies by farmers’ movements in the United States in the 1870s that also pushed back against banks, railroads and commodity traders.

The early decades of the 20^th century also saw a few firms dominate seeds and agrochemical sectors. These companies began merging in the 1980s to consolidate their businesses. Recent years have witnessed mega-mergers, like the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer in 2018, Dow and Dupont coming together to form Corteva Agriscience in 2019, fertiliser heavyweights Potash Corporation and Agrium forming Nutrien in 2018 or the acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina in 2017 and subsequent merger with Sinochem in 2022.

“Although mergers and acquisitions are happening all the time in these sectors, major episodes of consolidation have historically tended to occur in spurts – typically in moments where there are opportunities due to technological change or in response to downturns where firms are seeking to improve profitability by expanding their market share,” says Clapp.

How is this concentration impacting farmers?

This concentration of corporate power can have a negative effect on farmers because they have limited choice when it comes to purchasing seeds, chemicals and farm machinery. High concentration exists in downstream markets too, with a small number of companies dominating processing and retail.

“This often leaves agricultural producers in a difficult position between these concentrated upstream and downstream markets,” says Finger at ETH Zurich.

The high investment required to develop new products also creates major barriers for new entrants that can offer competition and encourage incumbents to lower prices. This is further exacerbated by these companies seeking to grow even bigger to benefit from the economies of scale.

“In industries like seeds or pesticides, long product development and admission cycles, high development costs, and patents protecting intellectual property create market entry barriers. Mergers with, and acquisitions of, other companies has been a successful strategy to create synergies in research and development and realise economies of scale,” says Max Koppenberg, assistant professor of business economics at the Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands.

Critics of corporate concentration also claim that relying on just a few companies can make farmers more vulnerable to shocks like the blockade of the Hormuz Strait.

“Anytime there is a supply shock, a system like our current industrial food system is going to be much more vulnerable to that supply shock. And the war in Iran, of course, is a great example. Fertiliser prices are skyrocketing, food prices are spiking and hunger levels have gone up,” says Chopra.

Is this legal?

Concentration of corporate power is not illegal per se. A dominant agricultural firm can fall foul of anti-trust law if it uses practices, such as selling products below cost price, to suppress competition. Mergers that concentrate power in a market with few players can also trigger scrutiny from competition authorities.

Koppenberg cautions that high concentration does not necessarily result in an abuse of market power. He gives the example of food retailing, which is highly concentrated in many economies. Retailers strongly compete with each other, leading to small profit margins and comparatively low consumer prices. 

“In many agricultural input industries, we see high concentration which does not translate into high profit margins, as companies must invest their gross profits in marketing, sales, and research and development to sustain their market shares,” Koppenberg says.  

How can the market dominance of ‘Big Agri’ be reined in?

One way to rein these companies in is to put in place policies that could lower barriers for entry for new companies. Koppenberg recommends policy instruments like the acceleration of admission processes for new crop protection products. Limiting the validity of patents is another strategy, though Koppenberg warns this could backfire.

“A reduction of intellectual property rights could also lead to more intense competition, lowering input prices for farmers, but would simultaneously reduce the incentive to invest in research and development, as the economic gains would no longer be exclusive to the innovating firm,” he says.

Antitrust or competition law and its enforcement is another tool to tackle. For example, the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer was obstructed by US and EU competition authorities. It was ultimately allowed, but only after significant divestitures, including Bayer selling its global seed business to rival BASF.

Competition authorities have quantitative tools to measure concentration levels like the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). This figure is small in a market with many small players and reaches a high of 10,000 when there is only one firm in a market. In the US, antitrust authorities qualify any marker with a HHI above 1,800 as highly concentrated and a change of more than 100 points as a significant increase.

Edited by Virginie Mangin/gw