U.S. seed and chemical firm Monsanto’s plans to slash the retail price of its flagship herbicide in the U.S. market are likely to carry over into its Canadian operations.
Winnipeg-based Monsanto Canada operates independently from its St. Louis, Mo. parent firm on programs and pricing. But the Canadian company, when asked Wednesday by e-mail, said it’s working through its retail network to develop a program that will see Roundup herbicides offered to growers at prices “competitive with other existing glyphosate-based products available in the marketplace.”
Read Also
U.S. grains: Corn rebounds from contract lows on short covering, bargain buying
Bargain buying and short covering lifted U.S. corn futures on Monday after the market slid to contract lows on expectations for strong U.S. output, traders said.
The end result for farmers, the company said, is that they will “likely see Roundup brand agricultural herbicides offered in the marketplace by retailers at prices lower than today, and similar to those announced recently in the U.S.”
Monsanto’s U.S. head office announced Sept. 17 that it expects U.S. farmers will see prices of its Roundup brands of glyphosate herbicide at “50 per cent of what they were last year,” according to Glenn Stith, North American crop protection lead.
“This new price is effective now as retailers and farmers begin planning for the 2010 planting season,” Stith said in a release last Thursday.
Monsanto Canada couldn’t yet offer specifics Wednesday on how it will price Roundup products north of the border, as it’s still working out the details of its programming.
Globally, Stith said last week, the glyphosate business was “incredibly volatile” in 2008 and 2009, leading to “a difficult situation for both suppliers and farmers to manage through.”
Both the company’s retailers and customers faced “uncertain product supply, rapidly fluctuating prices, and some quality issues from Chinese suppliers that led to crop safety concerns and failures in weed control,” he said.
It’s critical, Stith said, for U.S. farmers to have a “trusted and reliable source in a highly competitive market that has seen dramatic fluctuations.”
Monsanto noted that in the past two years it’s invested US$200 million in capacity expansion at its Roundup formulation plant at Luling, La., just west of New Orleans.
Also, Monsanto said it has invested to boost its mining capacity for glyphosate raw materials in southeastern Idaho, where its proposed mining plans are currently “under regulatory review.”
