The GMO-trait Treadmill

Is GMO technology and market power morphing into a deal with the devil?

Many farmers still believe the four major pesticide-seed-biotech companies “have their back.” But a growing number of producers are not so sure anymore.

Why the shifting sentiment? The many dots scattered across the bleak U.S. row-crop landscape include:

• Over 200 independent seed companies were acquired or have been driven out of business since the introduction of GMO seed technology in the 1990s.
• The cost of a bag of GMO corn seed has increased almost fourfold since the late 1990s. 
• Bayer/Monsanto (hereafter Bayer AG) and Corteva control almost 90 percent of the corn seed market, and Bayer AG controls 71 percent of corn biotech patents.
• Seed companies control the combinations of GMO traits that go into a given variety, and the average variety now expresses a half-dozen to a dozen GMO traits, each commanding an undisclosed, undiscoverable tech fee.
• About 90 percent of the U.S. corn seed supply contains the original Roundup Ready herbicide tolerance gene.
• In order to gain access to the Bayer AG Roundup Ready trait, independent seed companies are required to also take, and pay extra for, stacked Bt traits that may or may not meet farmer needs.
• Royalties paid to Bayer AG by independent seed companies for access to GMO traits have accounted for about 70 percent of the cost of a bag of corn in recent years.
• Bayer AG typically requires independent seed companies to exceed an 80 percent threshold of sales of Bayer AG seed and traits to qualify for maximum royalty payments and rebates.
• GMO crop farmers will lose between $50 and $100 per acre on the 2026 crop, on top of significant red ink in 2024–25, with three to five more lean years ahead, according to a survey of ag economists.
• The government has paid over $40 billion in ag subsidies in 2026 (maybe rising to over $50 billion if the new $11 billion bailout is approved), a sum often characterized as just a drop in the bucket compared to need. 
• The supply of non-GMO and single-trait corn is very limited, and often non-existent, in the highest-yielding, most disease-resistant varieties. 
• Corn growers in the U.S. are paying almost 70 percent more for corn seed than farmers in Brazil, about 120 percent more for herbicides and fungicides, and just under 90 percent more for insecticides. 

What connects these dots? It is the market power of the four dominant seed-pesticide-biotech companies, coupled with the fiduciary responsibility of company boards and management to maximize the return to their shareholders in an era when the rule of law is situational: applicable when it benefits a company, to be avoided when profits are at risk.

Resistance Is Driving the Trend Toward Multiple Traits

Multiple GMO traits are now needed because of the spread of resistant pests. Some of the hottest new hybrids express five or more insect control traits plus three or more herbicide-tolerant traits. 

The seed-pesticide-biotech companies have pulled off a hat trick at the expense of farmers and rural America. They have found ways to avoid competition, expand market share, and increase profits while marketing failing products. 

Collectively, the tech fees associated with GMO corn traits account for a substantial and growing share of the near four-fold increase in seed prices. The GMO-trait treadmill has proven highly profitable for the two corn-seed market leaders, but their profits have come at a cost to farmers. Since GMO seeds took over the market, at least 30 percent of the farmer’s historic profit per bushel of corn harvested now supports the seed-company bottom line.

The Anti-Competitive Playbook

Bayer AG and Corteva charge independent seed companies tech fees for their licensed GMO traits that usually range between 40 and 70 percent of the cost of a bag of corn. These fees get paid each year and are protected by rolling patents. The payments are pure profit. 

The reasons more farmers sense they are getting the short end of the ag-tech stick include the fact that tech fees charged for access to off-patent traits, e.g. the original source of the Roundup Ready trait in corn (NK603), have not gone down, and indeed, some independent seed companies have been forced to actually pay more per unit of now off-patent traits. 

That is not how patent protection is supposed to work. It is a flashing red-light warning that market power has been exploited to circumvent the system. 

The seed-pesticide-biotech industry has worked diligently, and with considerable success, to perfect tools and tactics enabling companies to extend patent protection almost indefinitely. They do this by making sure that all contemporary varieties offered for sale contain at least one trait, or one step in the “manufacturing” process, that is still under patent protection.

But their efforts go well beyond extending patent protection. The four major companies pursue strategies to compel retailers and independent seed companies to primarily sell the major company’s proprietary seeds and/or pesticide products. They do so by offering sizable end-of-year rebates, loyalty, or bonus payments if a retail outlet or regional seed company reaches an agreed-upon threshold of sales of a specific company’s seed and/or pesticide products. 

The payments are set at levels sufficient to ensure that few, if any, regional companies or retail outlets can turn a profit without the rebate or bonus payment. And no retail outlet can earn the rebate/payment from more than one of the two major corn seed companies. Choices must be made that inevitably narrow competition, and the ability of farmers to optimally mix and match technology.

A lawsuit filed in May 2026 by the Latham Seed Company challenges the anticompetitive, and arguably illegal, tactics that Bayer AG has used to limit competition in the corn seed market. The extent and sophistication of the tools deployed by Bayer AG are remarkable.

The steady increases in the price of new GMO varieties, and the pesticides required to bring a crop to harvest, are some of the reasons row-crop farmers have become steadily more dependent on government program payments to keep them in business. These are also some of the reasons farmers are so worried about what lies ahead. Given the nation’s $39+ trillion national debt, it is foolish to assume that taxpayers will be able to continue to so heavily subsidize row-crop agriculture. 

While most ag leaders are laser-focused on expanding use of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels as the “solution” to what ails row-crop ag, the subsidies required to keep those wheels spinning are also bound to be incrementally cut back. In all likelihood, markedly less corn will be converted to ethanol in 2036 than in 2026, but no one in the ag community, and definitely no candidate for public office, dare mention this reality. 

With the relatively high cost of commodity crop production in the U.S., export markets are not likely to absorb excess production without sizable help from taxpayers, even after a return to “normal” levels of tariffs and protectionism. 

This is why many people are now convinced a major reset of food and ag policy is needed. But forging agreement on a sound path forward will obviously be challenging given the range of opinions about the best way to help farmers get back on track. Failure to find agreement will preserve the status quo, and then just about everyone loses, except for the big companies and investors who are inventing new ways to extract “value” from rural America.