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Reaching Out to Farmers
Farmers want superior yield. They also want to continue to do business with familiar companies. That’s why Monsanto offers its products through both leading seed brands and a broad licensing business:
Leading Brands. Our support of farmers and the crops they plant begins with our leading national brands: DEKALB, Asgrow, Deltapine, and Seminis. These brands hold leading positions in key agriculture-producing regions in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. In the United States, our largest market, we also serve farmers through American Seeds Inc. (ASI), a holding company for approximately 20 regional corn and soybean brands. A similar model, International Seeds Group (ISG), was established in our fruits and vegetables business this year. This regional approach allows us to serve farmers through the brands — and the people — they know and trust. It also gives our ASI and ISG companies access to Monsanto’s leading breeding and R&D engine.
Licensing. We supplement our branded approach by licensing both seed genetics and our trait technologies to hundreds of seed companies throughout the world. This approach ensures that farmers — in key markets like the United States, Latin America, Europe, and India — will have access to our products in the seed brands they prefer. Our Corn States business licenses our seed germplasm and biotechnology traits to more than 200 independent corn and soybean seed companies in the United States. A similar model, Cotton States, augments our U.S. cotton business.
Our customer-oriented market strategy is both a critical and a sustainable competitive advantage. It takes substantial time and investment to build the national brands, to assemble the regional brands, and to reach the licensing agreements that support the strategy. That advantage is sustained by relationships with the best companies in the agriculture industry.
