Starboard, in its letter to Corteva’s chairman, said it had identified someone new for the top job, but declined to name the person.

Corteva’s chairman Greg Page said the board unanimously backed CEO Jim Collins.

The agricultural supplier said while it agreed with many points raised by Starboard, the activist investor had not discussed with the company the specific operational recommendations on how to improve performance.

“We believe we are at an important inflection point in our company’s trajectory as the extensive investments we have made to enhance productivity over the last 18 plus months will begin to accelerate their impact on earnings,” Page said.

Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith last year criticized Corteva’s financial performance, noting its cash flow margin of 14.4 per cent lags behind peers and that the share price could be closer to US$55.

Corteva’s shares, which had risen 1.3 per cent in early trading, fell about 2.5 per cent to US$42.57.

The company, like other agricultural suppliers, has struggled in recent years as excess grain supplies have hurt crop prices and low farmer incomes have made it tough for companies to raise prices for pesticides or seeds.

Corteva, which spun out of industrial conglomerate DowDupont in 2019, has shut down some facilities and recently said it would look to cut some more costs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Starboard is known for its operational know-how and often proposes to add new directors to a company’s board. It had won 17 board seats at four companies in the first half of 2020.

The activist investor owns 11.7 million shares, or a 1.6 per cent stake, in Corteva, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.

— Reporting for Reuters by Arathy S Nair in Bangalore.

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The unit, which supplies everything from soy-based food ingredients to tablet binders, could be worth at least US$20 billion as a standalone entity, Bloomberg said.

DuPont declined to comment on the unit’s divestiture.

The Wilmington, Delaware-based company said in February that its overall goal was to divest about 10 per cent of its portfolio.

DuPont was a part of DowDupont until a split earlier this year. DowDupont in June also spun off the merged company’s seed and crop protection businesses under the name Corteva, and in April spun off its materials science division under the Dow name.

The nutrition and biosciences unit, DuPont’s biggest revenue generator in 2018 on a pro-forma basis, was hit by lower sales of food, beverage and pharma solutions in the latest reported quarter, and brought in four per cent lower sales than a year earlier.

— Reporting for Reuters by Debroop Roy and Manojna Maddipatla in Bangalore.

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The Delaware-based agribusiness, under the name Corteva, Inc., is scheduled to begin “when-issued” trading on the NYSE on May 24, and “regular way” trading on June 3, under the ticker symbol “CTVA.”

DowDuPont — the holding company formed in 2017 by the merger of Dow and DuPont — announced Wednesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has declared Corteva’s registration statement effective, and that the DowDuPont board of directors has approved Corteva’s spinoff.

“This milestone marks the completion of all the regulatory requirements for us to separate into a leading pure-play independent agriculture company on June 1,” Corteva CEO James Collins said in a release.

“Corteva Agriscience is well positioned to drive long-term value for shareholders as we leverage our balanced portfolio and robust innovation pipeline to deliver the complete solution farmers need to maximize yield and profitability,”

The spinoff calls for each current shareholder in DowDuPont to receive one share of Corteva common stock for every three shares of DowDuPont common stock they hold.

DowDuPont on June 1 will also rename itself DuPont de Nemours, Inc., doing business under the name DuPont.

The new DuPont will operate the two companies’ combined specialty chemical product operations. Dow and DuPont’s combined materials science divisions, which were spun off in March, now operate under the Dow name.

Corteva’s operations in Canada include seeds, sold under the Pioneer and Brevant brand names, with herbicide-tolerant trait systems including Enlist, Optimum GLY, SmartStax and, since February, Clearfield.

Corteva’s roster of crop protection chemicals in the Canadian market includes, among others, herbicides such as Enlist Duo, Lontrel, Frontline, Grazon and Tordon; insecticides such as Lorsban and Delegate; seed treatments such as Lumiderm, Lumisena and Lumivia; and fungicides such as Acapela and Nova.

Worldwide, the Corteva agriculture segments have booked combined annual net sales of over US$14 billion in recent years. Their combined EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) for 2018 came in at US$2.05 billion. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Shares of the new division, Dow, will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Dow and Dupont completed a US$130 billion merger in 2017 to form DowDuPont and had outlined a plan to create three separately traded companies focusing on agriculture, plastics and specialty products.

Corteva, the agriculture unit, is set to separate from the new specialty chemical maker DuPont on June 1.

— Reporting for Reuters by John Benny in Bangalore.

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Warren, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts and a fierce Wall Street critic, released a broad plan that she said would make it easier for small farmers to survive in the face of growing corporate consolidation in the rural economy.

She singled out several big agriculture corporations, naming Tyson Foods, Bayer-Monsanto and Dow-DuPont, and said the Bayer-Monsanto merger should not have been approved. Under her plan, regulators would review “anti-competitive” agricultural mergers and break up integrated businesses that control many different levels of the farming chain and markets.

“We can make better policy choices  – and we can begin by leveling the playing field for America’s family farmers,” Warren wrote in a Medium blog post outlining her proposal.

Warren released the plan ahead of a campaign trip to Iowa, a farm state that kicks off the Democratic presidential nominating contest in February 2020. During her visit, she will participate in a Democratic policy forum on rural issues as the party searches for ways to reverse Republican President Donald Trump’s win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in rural areas in 2016.

Earlier this month, Warren also proposed breaking up big tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook to promote competition in the technology sector. She has made her populist economic message the heart of her campaign in a growing Democratic field of contenders, arguing the economy is rigged for corporations and the wealthy.

“Bad decisions in Washington have consistently favoured the interests of multinational corporations and big business lobbyists over the interests of family farmers,” Warren said in her agricultural proposal.

“Mergers mean that farmers have fewer and fewer choices for buying and selling, while vertical integration has meant that big agribusinesses face less competition throughout the chain and thus capture more and more of the profits,” she said.

Warren’s plan also would end “contract farming” by conglomerates, create a national right-to-repair law that allows farmers to repair their own equipment or take it to a mechanic of their choice instead of an authorized agent, and establish country-of-origin rules to require beef and pork producers to label where their livestock was raised and slaughtered.

— John Whitesides is a Reuters political correspondent in Washington, D.C.

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DowDuPont announced Monday the agribusiness, which will include DuPont Crop Protection, DuPont Pioneer and Dow AgroSciences, will rebrand as Corteva Agriscience after its spinoff, expected by June 1 next year.

The name, to be pronounced coreTAYvah, combines cor and teva, a Latin root word for “heart” and a Hebrew word for “nature” respectively.

The company, which closed on their merger deal in September, unveiled the ag division’s name and logo Monday at the Commodity Classic farm trade show in Anaheim.

The company earlier this month unveiled a combined premium seed brand, Brevant, which will replace the Dow Seeds brand in Canada and some countries in Europe and the Coodetec and Biogene brands in Brazil this year.

The Corteva brand “acknowledges our history while looking forward to our commitment to enhancing farmer productivity as well as the health and well-being of the consumers they serve,” James Collins Jr., the agriculture division’s chief operating officer, said in a release.

DowDuPont billed Corteva on Monday as “a market-shaping, standalone agriculture company with leading positions in seed technologies, crop protection and digital agriculture.”

Corteva, Collins said, will “continue to invest in some of the most recognized and premium brands in agriculture: Pioneer, Mycogen, and the newly launched Brevant seed brands, as well as our award-winning crop protection products, such as Aproach Prima fungicide and Quelex herbicide with Arylex active, while bringing new products to market through our solid pipeline of active chemistry and technologies.”

Corteva’s corporate headquarters, DowDuPont previously announced, will be in Wilmington, Delaware, with “global business centres” in Johnston, Iowa, and in Indianapolis.

The two sites in the Midwest are expected to serve as homes for the bulk of Corteva’s “leadership of business lines, business support functions, R+D, global supply chain, and sales and marketing capabilities.”

Apart from its ag business, DowDuPont also announced Monday its materials science division, when spun off, will be branded as Dow, with the Dow diamond as its logo. The specialty products division, when spun off, will go with the DuPont brand. — AGCanada.com Network

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The newly-combined company, formed by the merger of chemical giants Dow Chemical and DuPont four months ago, said its net sales came in at $20.1 billion versus comparable net sales – which the company terms “proforma” sales – of $17.7 billion a year earlier (all figures US$).

It also said it planned to move ahead with plans to split the new company into three separate parts, starting with the Materials Science unit by the end of the first quarter of 2019. Agriculture and Specialty Products are expected to follow by June 1, 2019.

The chemicals giant saw prices rise by about five per cent across markets in the fourth quarter, while volumes — a proxy for demand — rose six per cent.

“In developed economies in particular, such as the United States, Germany, France, Canada and the U.K., we continue to see strong leading indicators of broad-based growth,” executive chairman Andrew Liveris said in the results statement.

“Furthermore, early signs from the business community point to U.S. tax reform as a catalyst for further domestic capital investments.”

Currently trading at a market value of about $176.9 billion, Dow and DuPont completed the $130 billion mega-merger in September. That created the world’s largest chemical maker, until the company goes through with a plan to split into three companies.

DowDuPont’s merger was welcomed by investors as a way to streamline the companies’ sprawling operations by combining overlapping businesses.

The company said on Thursday it was now planning to save $3.3 billion in costs on the back of the merger — slightly more than the $3 billion it expected to save earlier.

For the reported quarter DowDuPont saw a $1.1 billion benefit from lower U.S corporate taxes, but still posted a net loss of $1.2 billion from continuing operations — substantially the result of merger-related costs.

Adjusted for those and other one time effects, the company said it earned 83 cents on a share. Ahead of the numbers Wall Street was expecting it to make 67 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S numbers.

Shares of the company dipped to $75 in premarket trading on Thursday compared to the previous close of $75.58.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nivedita Bhattacharjee.

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The government agency that regulates pesticides issued a statement to Glacier FarmMedia reiterating its support for the current Canadian labels.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week increased restrictions on the use of dicamba sprayed over growing crops, after the first season of use of dicamba-resistant soybeans turned up about three million U.S. acres with crop damage.

There appeared to be a much lower level of damage in Canada, where there was a campaign to encourage farmers to only use the system with pre-plant and pre-emergent timing and where there are fewer herbicide-resistant weed challenges.

The dicamba-resistant system, called Xtend, is licensed and used by Monsanto.

For its part, Monsanto Canada said in an email its Canadian growers’ experience with the Xtend system in 2017 was “overwhelmingly positive,” with “very few” calls from growers, applicators and/or retailers about off-site herbicide movement.

The EPA made application of dicamba over growing crops a “restricted use,” meaning it can only be applied by certain licensed applicators, with special training, or workers under their supervision.

Farmers will have to maintain specific records regarding the use of these products to improve compliance with label restrictions.

Maximum wind speeds allowable for the use of the product have been reduced from 15 to 10 mph (from 24 to 16 km/h) and the time of day of allowable use has been reduced. The EPA has also made more provisions for making sure there aren’t sensitive crops close to where spraying happens and changing language on cleanout of tanks to prevent cross-contamination.

The EPA says it worked with dicamba manufacturers Monsanto, BASF and DuPont on the label changes.

Health Canada is the supervising department for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which evaluates and approves pesticides in Canada.

In its statement Health Canada said it is aware of the dicamba drift challenges in the U.S. and “to protect the environment, Health Canada has already mandated that labels of dicamba products include spray drift precautions, use directions and buffer zones. The department is confident that these existing requirements address issues such as those identified in the U.S.”

The Canadian label says optimum application conditions are between five km/h and 16 km/h and contains specific instructions on tank cleanout.

A Monsanto Canada spokesperson last week said no dicamba label changes are currently anticipated from the PMRA. Health Canada said it “will continue to monitor the situation and will take action as necessary.”

Noting crop protection companies in Canada are federally required to report any claims involving adverse effects of pesticides, Monsanto’s spokesperson said data on the Xtend system for the 2017 season so far showed inquiries about product performance, off-target movement and “crop response” involving fewer than 900 acres in all, or about 0.1 per cent of Xtend acres planted across Western and Eastern Canada.

— John Greig is a field editor for Glacier FarmMedia based at Ailsa Craig, Ont. Follow him at @jgreig on Twitter. Includes files from Dave Bedard of AGCanada.com.

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Philadelphia-based FMC Corp. announced Thursday it received the final approval needed, from the Competition Commission of India, to close the deal the company reached with DuPont in late March.

FMC’s deal allows DuPont to shed several of the assets required to meet regulators’ conditions for its own merger with Dow Chemical, which closed Sept. 1.

The deal, an asset swap which will see DuPont get FMC’s health and nutrition business plus US$1.2 billion cash, is now on track to close effective Nov. 1, FMC CEO Pierre Brondeau said in a release.

For Canadian farmers, the deal will see FMC take over DuPont’s portfolio of cereal broadleaf and pre-seed burn-off herbicides in Canada.

The deal also gives FMC the PrecisionPac herbicide dispensing system; DuPont’s experimental farm at Hanley, Sask., south of Saskatoon; a packaging plant in Calgary; and a chemical manufacturing facility at Manati in Puerto Rico.

The Competition Bureau of Canada, which cleared the Dow/DuPont merger in June, noted the deal will also give FMC DuPont’s Stine facility at Newark, Delaware.

The Stine plant, the bureau said, today houses DuPont’s “primary herbicide discovery and development efforts for Canadian markets.”

FMC, which maintains a Canadian office in Saskatoon, is an “acceptable” buyer for the DuPont assets, with “the managerial, operational and financial capability to compete effectively in Canada,” the bureau said in June.

FMC’s Canadian brand portfolio includes Aim, Authority, Command 360 and Focus herbicides, Rovral, Fracture and Fullback fungicides and Pounce, Beleaf and Capture insecticides. — AGCanada.com Network

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As per the terms of the merger-of-equals deal they first announced in late 2015, the two companies’ separate shares ceased trading in New York Thursday as their merger officially closed — and the new merged company, dubbed DowDuPont, began trading Friday.

The combined company said Friday it’s now working on the “future state operating models and organizational designs” for its three merged spinoff companies: agriculture, materials science and specialty products.

“Once each division has its own processes, people, assets, systems and licenses in place to operate independently from the parent company, DowDuPont intends to separate the divisions to stand within their own legal entities” — all of which are expected “within 18 months,” DowDuPont said in a release.

It added that it expects to reach “100 per cent run rate” on the cost synergies within 24 months of the merger’s closing.

DowDuPont overall will operate under DuPont chief executive Ed Breen as its CEO, while James Collins, Jr., DuPont’s executive vice-president for agriculture, will be chief operating officer for the merged firm’s ag division.

DowDuPont said Friday its plan calls for a merged, spun-off agriculture company to be headquartered in DuPont’s home town of Wilmington, Delaware, with “global business centres” at Johnston, Iowa, and Indianapolis, Indiana — the home bases for DuPont Pioneer and Dow AgroSciences respectively.

The overall merger, DowDuPont said, is expected to result in “run-rate cost synergies” of about $3 billion (all figures US$), with the potential for about $1 billion in “growth synergies.”

Agriculture assets set to be shed, to get antitrust regulators’ approvals for the merger, include DuPont’s Canadian cereal crop broadleaf and pre-seed burnoff herbicide portfolio; its PrecisionPac herbicide dispensing system; its experimental farm at Hanley, Sask.; and its packaging plant in Calgary.

As per a side deal reached in March this year, those assets, among others, are being sold to Philadelphia-based FMC Corp.

“We are extremely excited to complete this transformational merger and move forward to create three intended industry-leading, independent, publicly traded companies,” DowDuPont executive chairman and former Dow CEO Andrew Liveris said Friday.

The merger’s “true value,” he said, “lies in the intended creation of three industry powerhouses that will define their markets and drive growth for the benefit of all stakeholders,” referring to the expected agriculture, materials science and specialty products companies now under development.

“Our teams have been working for more than a year on integration planning, and — as of today — we will hit the ground running on executing those plans with an intention to complete the separations as quickly as possible.”

Farmers, among other customers, are expected to benefit from “superior solutions and expanded product offerings” by a combined firm that “will be able to respond faster and more effectively to rapidly changing conditions with innovative products and greater choice,” DowDuPont said.

DowDuPont said it envisions the merged agriculture business as “bring(ing) together the strengths of DuPont Pioneer, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences to better serve growers around the world with a superior portfolio of solutions, greater choice and competitive price for value.”

Their combined capabilities and “innovation engine” are expected to allow the ag business to bring a broader suite of products to the market faster, “so it can be an even better partner to growers, delivering innovation and helping them to increase their productivity and profitability.” — AGCanada.com Network

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