Monsanto Company

Monsanto Company provides agricultural products for farmers in the United States and internationally. It has two segments, Seeds and Genomics, and Agricultural Productivity. The Seeds and Genomics segment produces corn, soybeans, canola, wheat, and cotton seeds, as well as vegetable and fruit seeds, including tomato, pepper, eggplant, melon, cucumber, pumpkin, squash, beans, broccoli, onions, and lettuce. This segment also develops biotechnology traits that assist farmers in controlling insects and weeds, as well as provide genetic material and biotechnology traits to other seed companies for their seed brands. The Agricultural Productivity segment offers glyphosate-based herbicides for agricultural, industrial, ornamental, and turf applications; lawn-and-garden herbicides for residential lawn-and-garden applications; and other selective herbicides for control of preemergent annual grass and small seeded broadleaf weeds in corn and other crops.

The company offers its products under various brands, including the Roundup Ready, Bollgard, Bollgard II, YieldGard, YieldGard VT, Roundup Ready 2 Yield, and SmartStax for traits; DEKALB, Asgrow, Deltapine, and Vistive for row crop seeds; Seminis, De Ruiter, Royal Sluis, Asgrow, and Petoseed for vegetable seeds; Roundup for herbicides; and Harness for corn. It also licenses germplasm and trait technologies to seed companies. The company sells its products through distributors, retailers, dealers, agricultural co-operatives, plant raisers, and agents, as well as directly to farmers. Monsanto Company has a joint venture with Cargill, Inc. to commercialize a proprietary grain processing technology under the name Extrax. It has collaborations with BASF in plant biotechnology that focuses on high-yielding crops and crops that are tolerant to adverse conditions; and Biotechnology, Inc. to source genetic elements that enable crops to express desirable traits. The company was founded in 2000 and is based in St. Louis, Missouri.