Who owns your tomato?
Another big horticultural seed company bought by Monsanto
Posted by Matthew Dillon
When Monsanto buys into a market, they buy in big. In 2005, Monsanto's seed/genetic trait holdings were primarily in corn, cotton, soybeans, and canola. That year, they purchased Seminis, the world's largest vegetable seed company (see And We Have the Seed) specializing in seed for vegetable field crops. Now their takeover of the vegetable seed sector continues, as they have announced the intent to purchase the Dutch breeding and seed company, De Ruiter Seeds.

This purchase diversifies Monsanto's seed holdings in vegetable field crops (Seminis) to "protected culture" fruits and vegetables (primarily tomatoes and cucurbits produced greenhouse, hothouse, etc). Analysts from Bank of America say that this gives Monsanto 25 percent of the world vegetable seed market, but I believe that this is a low estimate. (I contacted both Monsanto and the BofA analysts to ask for their data, but they did not respond to my emails.)

In 1998, according to their own figures, Seminis already controlled 26 percent of the overall global market in vegetable seeds, 39 percent of the U.S. market, and 24 percent of the European market. This is all vegetable seeds, but in their specialties -- tomatoes, peppers, cucurbits -- the percentage market share is much higher. A case filed against Seminis in 2000 by the U.S. government stated that they controlled 70 percent of the U.S. fresh tomato seed market (the case was regarding an anti-competition agreement that kept a Israeli company from competing in the U.S. tomato seed market. Syngenta initially lost in the federal district court case, but won in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit). And in 2005, at the time of the Monsanto acquisition of Seminis, I spoke with a tomato breeder for Seminis who estimated that they had 75 percent control of the overall U.S. market.

LINK TO CON.