Elatus Era fungicide is a new offering from Syngenta Canada, which claims it delivers “superior protection” against anthracnose, white mould and Ascochyta blight. Both can signifiancly reduce yields and increase harvest time for lentil growers, the company said in a news release.

Syngenta is also promoting the fungicide as having a “first flower to row closure” application window.

Carolyn Wilson, technical lead for fungicides with Syngenta Canada, said Elatus Era outyielded competitor results in grower field trials by 3.7 bu/ac.

She also pointed out a clean, green canopy among its attributes. The company credits Solatenol — one of two active ingredients in the product — for this quality.

Solatenol is a Group 7 active with a track record for controlling anthracnose (including Group 11 resistant biotypes) and Ascochyta in lentils. It’s said to increase the light and energy capture needed for a productive crop, at the same time protecting the canopy from disease.

Elantus Era also contains prothioconazole, which is a Group 3 active Syngenta noted for its “strong, reliable” white mould protection.

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U.S. District Judge Brian Miller in Little Rock, Arkansas, said the state can pursue its claims that loyalty programs run by Syngenta and Corteva that provide rebates for pesticide purchases violate federal and state antitrust and consumer-protection laws.

Arkansas’ lawsuit claimed Syngenta and Corteva are paying pesticide distributors or retailers to restrict their purchase of generic crop-protection products that contain specific ingredients.

The lawsuit said distributors and retailers fear losing their loyalty payments and so have no incentive to sell more generics.

Syngenta and Corteva did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They have denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, said the state “has legitimate claims against the anticompetitive rebate programs” of Syngenta and Corteva and will seek to “hold companies accountable for practices that harm the market and ultimately consumers.”

Syngenta and Corteva in seeking dismissal of the state’s lawsuit said their rebate programs lowered prices and denied they are anticompetitive.

They also said the state should have been barred from bringing antitrust claims on behalf of consumers.

Miller said the state had sufficiently alleged Arkansas residents were paying higher prices for pesticide products based on the claimed anticompetitive conduct.

Syngenta and Corteva are fighting other lawsuits challenging their loyalty programs.

In January, U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in the Winston-Salem federal court said the companies must face some antitrust claims lodged by farmers in California, Texas, Florida and other states.

Schroeder last year also said that a related U.S. Federal Trade Commission lawsuit, filed with a bipartisan group of U.S. states, could move forward.

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U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in a decision on Tuesday said farmers from California, Illinois, Florida, Texas and five other states who sued the companies can proceed for now with some claims under federal and state laws.

Schroeder said the farmers can seek an order to force the pesticide makers to end their allegedly anti-competitive conduct. The judge cut a federal antitrust damages claim, but the farmers could be eligible for compensation under some state law claims remaining in the litigation.

Syngenta and lawyers for the plaintiffs declined to comment, and Corteva did not immediately respond to a request for one.

The farmers’ lawsuit alleged Syngenta and Corteva used loyalty agreements and rebate programs with distributors to block generic manufacturers from making inroads into the market. That allowed the companies to charge higher prices, according to the farmers. Syngenta and Corteva have denied the claims.

The lawsuit mirrors a case being pursued by the FTC and a group of states, including California, Texas, Indiana and Illinois. The alleged exclusive-dealing scheme has caused farmers to overpay annually by “many millions,” according to the FTC.

Schroeder of the federal court in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in a ruling last year said the government litigation could move ahead.

Syngenta and Corteva had argued the farmers had not shown how they were harmed, since they said they buy products from distributors and retailers and not from the manufacturers.

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Syngenta’s Enogen trait produces corn that contains more alpha-amylase enzyme which makes the breakdown of starch to sugars more efficient. Enogen corn feed is about five per cent more feed efficient than corn without the trait.

Reducing the need for feed means fewer methane emissions, which is attractive to companies like McDonald’s which aim to show they’re reducing carbon emissions in their supply chain.

The program will start first in the United States, but Dan Wright, who leads the Enogen business in North America and seeds in Canada for Syngenta, says bringing the program called Feed Forward to Canada is a priority.

“There’s a lot of beef and dairy in Canada and expanding the Feed Forward program into Canada is something we’re really active on to make happen,” he says.

Farmers will receive a direct payment from Syngenta for four cents per head per day for each animal on the feed. In return for the payment, McDonald’s owns the carbon intensity offset asset.

Producers also have to commit to feeding Enogen corn at 50 per cent of the starch in the cattle’s ration on a dry matter basis in a Total Mixed Ration. The corn can be in any form it’s usually fed on a farm, including silage, high moisture corn or grain corn. Enogen is approved for food and feed use in Canad and the United States, but it is kept from the food stream as the composition is different than most corn. It’s also used in ethanol.

There are numbers of days on feed required to qualify including:

• Backgrounding – 70 to 120 days
• Finishers – 120 to 225 days
• Dairy beef – 180 days

As a result, a dairy beef animal fed for 180 days would qualify for a $7.20 payment, while an animal backgrounded for 120 days would receive $4.80.

To qualify for the payment, farmers have to file a feeding report, a closeout report and an invoice that shows the proof of purchase for seed, all managed by a stewardship contract. There’s also a requirement for verification.

Wright says trials have been underway for three years on the project to fine-tune reporting and operational requirements.

“I think we’ve got to a pretty good space,” he says.

The data provided to Syngenta is aggregated and anonymous when it’s sent to McDonald’s and the payment is made directly from Syngenta to the farm. Avoiding more players in the process and keeping it efficient was part of the testing period and a priority, says Wright.

McDonald’s, which also has its U.S. meat processor Lopez Foods in the project as a partner, says that for 1,000 head of beef cattle on feed it expects per year:

• 178 tonnes CO2e in greenhouse gas reduction
• a 69-acre reduction (28 hectares) in land use for growing feed
• a reduction of 22 million litres of water used
• 231,000 kilowatt-hours energy savings

The partnership with McDonald’s runs to 2030, says Wright, and he expects it to grow over years, like the adoption of any new technology. McDonald’s has set a target of offsetting 164,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

He says there are discussions ongoing with other consumer packaged goods companies. To start, the payments only cover beef and dairy beef production, but there could be dairy opportunities in the future.

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Syngenta’s Enogen corn, a genetically modified crop, contains an enzyme which quickly converts starch to useable sugars.

This allows the cattle to reach market weight quicker and so reduces the greenhouse gases they produce before they are slaughtered and their meat is made into burgers.

Syngenta said a herd of 1,000 animals using the corn as feed would produce 196 less tons of CO2, the same as removing 35 cars from the road for a year.

— Reporting by John Revill

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St. Louis-based U.S. District Judge Sarah Pitlyk ruled on Friday that farmers and other plaintiffs failed to present sufficient allegations that the companies had violated U.S. antitrust law.

The farmers said Bayer and others schemed to collectively boycott electronic “crop inputs” platforms, depriving the ability of farms and other purchasers to make effective cost comparisons for key agricultural materials.

Pitlyk said the plaintiffs’ allegations did not rebut the companies’ claims that their practices served legitimate business purposes. She faulted the plaintiffs for advancing “mere generalizations” in their lawsuit.

Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta and BASF, another defendant, welcomed the court’s ruling in separate statements. Bayer said the crop input market is “competitive, fair and diverse.” Corteva said it will continue to “vigorously” compete in agricultural markets.

All of the defendants had denied any wrongdoing.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs at law firms Lockridge Grindal Nauen and Gustafson Gluek declined to comment.

The case includes lawsuits that were filed across the country in 2021. The crop protection chemicals at issue include fungicides, herbicides and insecticides.

Farmers accused wholesale and retail outlets of pressuring manufacturers such as Bayer not to deal with emerging e-commerce platforms that would have opened the crop input market to greater price transparency.

The defendants countered that there was no evidence supporting the plaintiffs’ conspiracy claims, and that any resistance to the electronic platforms “was entirely consistent with each individual defendant’s independent commercial interests.”

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In the suit filed last week, IBAMA said it was seeking damages to remedy the environmental and human health problems arising from the use of such a toxic product.

IBAMA told a federal judge in Sao Paulo it had found evidence of use of a substance called “bronopol” at levels almost three times above the quantity authorized in the manufacturing of insecticide “Engeo Pleno.”

That substance was also illegally added to insecticides “Karate Zeon 250 CS” and “Karate Zeon 50 CS” but is not a part of their formula, according to IBAMA’s allegations.

Syngenta said it presented before the court “proof of the non-existence of any type of risk or environmental damage” resulting from the allegations made.

The Switzerland-headquartered firm said health agency ANVISA, the agriculture ministry and IBAMA itself recently approved a new version of “Engeo Pleno” which would be “based on the levels of bronopol found in the formulations mentioned in the suit.”

The company did not comment on the other two products, but said it took multiple measures “to eliminate any possibility of failure of the nature detected by IBAMA during an inspection in 2021.”

Syngenta would have produced 4.7 million liters of these three insecticides, of which at least 4.4 million were marketed, according to evidence produced by the agency and presented to the court.

IBAMA estimates that the sale of the allegedly adulterated products generated more than 400 million reais (C$98.8  million) for the company.

The agency has also asked the judge to force the company, controlled by ChemChina since 2017, to identify, collect and properly dispose of products sold that have not yet been withdrawn from the market.

The courts have not made any decisions yet.

The value of the compensation will be determined during the course of proceedings, according to court documents.

To guarantee payment of damages in case IBAMA wins the case, the agency has asked the court to require the company to set aside 90 million reais.

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The Chinese state-owned pesticide giant last Friday withdrew its bid for the initial public offering (IPO) saying the decision was taken “after careful consideration of (the) industry environment and the company’s own development strategy”.

Syngenta filed to list on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange last May seeking to raise 65 billion yuan (C$12.4 billion) and passed a review by the bourse’s listing committee a month later. Its executives said as recently as last November that Syngenta planned to list in 2024.

The company, however, did not secure a green light from China’s securities regulator or top leaders at the State Council, a prerequisite for blockbuster IPOs to go ahead, said the four people familiar with the matter.

The planned flotation finally came unstuck after Syngenta, owned by Sinochem, in March received informal instructions from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to pull its bid for the mega listing, said one of the people.

The State Council Information Office and the CSRC did not respond to a request for comment. Syngenta said it would not comment beyond the statement it issued on Friday.

The reason for Syngenta’s IPO withdrawal and the way it was managed, which have not been reported previously, underscore how Beijing is prioritizing boosting investor confidence in the secondary market over the launch of new equity offerings.

The government’s request for Syngenta to scrap its IPO came despite the company’s seeds being essential to food security and China’s self-reliance in grain production, which the country’s leaders, especially President Xi Jinping, have strongly promoted.

The withdrawal resulted from Chinese authorities’ concerns over the potential impact of a sizeable IPO on the frail stock market which had a wretched start to the year, said the four people with knowledge of the matter.

Large IPOs have often been cited by analysts as a reason for triggering the plunge of domestic stock markets, as large amounts of money are frozen when subscriptions are taken, sapping liquidity in the secondary market.

China’s stock market rout at the beginning of the year came after mainland shares lagged global stocks for three years and with deflation at levels not seen since the global financial crisis of 2008-09.

Tighter scrutiny

China’s securities watchdog has sharply tightened scrutiny of IPOs this year, leading to companies scrapping domestic listing plans in droves, with some turning to offshore markets such as Hong Kong and New York.

The stricter reviews came after the CSRC in August last year announced plans to slow the pace of IPOs and equity follow-on offerings in an attempt to bolster the secondary market in the world’s second-largest economy.

During January-March 2024, proceeds raised via mainland China IPOs plunged 82 per cent from a year earlier to just $2.4 billion (C$3.25 billion), the smallest quarterly fundraising since the last quarter of 2018, LSEG data showed.

The sudden chill in China’s IPO market, which was the world’s biggest in 2022 and 2023, comes after the securities watchdog, under new chairman Wu Qing, last month vowed to step up scrutiny of listing candidates and crack down on any lapses.

The listing of Syngenta, which was bought by ChemChina in 2017 for $43 billion (C$58.2 billion) and folded into Sinochem in 2021, would have been China’s largest and one of the world’s biggest flotations this year.

The offering has been postponed repeatedly by various issues since first being filed in 2021.

The company initially aimed to float on Shanghai’s tech-focused STAR Market which generally offers high valuations and filed the application in June 2021. Two years later, it shifted to the main board for listing.

Syngenta said in its statement last Friday that it would look to restart the listing process either in China or on a different exchange, when conditions are right, as well as explore alternative sources of funding.

Market analysts have previously cited Hong Kong, Zurich and London as potential alternatives for a Syngenta listing.

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The varieties approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in a notice on Tuesday include seed varieties owned by Dabeinong and China National Seed Group, a unit of Syngenta Group.

China has for years moved cautiously on the deployment of GM crops but in January said it will expand the planting of GM soybeans and corn after pilot projects showed good results in improving yields and lowering costs compared to conventional types of seeds.

The world’s biggest buyer of soybeans and corn aims to raise domestic production through higher yielding seeds and cut its grains imports of more than 100 million metric tons a year.

The list of approved varieties is open for public comment until April 17, according to the ministry notice.

“After the above varieties are approved according to the procedures, the actual planting area should also comply with the relevant arrangements for the national biological breeding industrialization,” said the notice.

–Reporting for Reuters by Dominique Patton.

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The decision is a win for farmers who planned to use dicamba products sold by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta on genetically modified soybeans and cotton during the summer growing season, and for the agrichemical companies.

Environmental activists have objected to dicamba herbicides because they are known to drift away and damage other crops that are not resistant.

But farm groups had warned the court ruling, if fully enforced by the federal government, could financially hurt growers who will plant their next crops in the spring. The groups had said most growers had already determined which seeds and chemicals they will use and may struggle to shift away from dicamba herbicides or crops that tolerate the chemical.

“We are very appreciative of EPA’s decision to let us get through the 2024 growing season by using any product already in the delivery pipeline,” said Josh Gackle, president of the American Soybean Association and a North Dakota soybean farmer.

U.S. District Court Judge David Bury in Arizona last week vacated the EPA’s registrations of dicamba-based weedkillers from 2020, saying the agency violated procedures mandating public input. The ruling affected Bayer’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia and Sygnenta’s Tavium, commonly used herbicides on U.S. farms.

Bayer soybeans that resist dicamba-based herbicide are the No. 2 most-planted soybeans in the United States, though not all are sprayed with the chemical. Bayer and Syngenta welcomed the EPA’s decision to let farmers use existing supplies. BASF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EPA said on Wednesday it authorized the sale and distribution of dicamba products “that were already in the possession of growers or in the channels of trade and outside the control of pesticide companies” before the court ruling on Feb. 6.

The agency “received ample evidence that millions of gallons” of dicamba products meant to be sprayed on crops had already entered trade channels, according to a statement.

The Arizona court decision won’t affect Canadian farmers, Bayer Canada said last week.

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