the “Genealogy” of Herbicide Companies

With all the herbicide company mergers that have taken place in recent years, it’s tough to keep track of who’s who.  That’s why Arnold Appleby, professor emeritus of crop science at Oregon State University, created “family trees,” so to speak, to track the origin and mergers of major U.S. herbicide companies over the years. 

He makes no guarantees for accuracy of the information, based largely on people’s memories and interpretations, which may be inexact. Only U.S. companies are listed, including international companies only if they had subsidiaries in the U.S., such as Ciba-Geigy or BASF.  He has tried to include mergers or acquisitions of entire companies or the ag divisions of companies, but not acquisition of individual products.

Acquisitions of seed companies are not included, nor are mergers and acquisitions in the works, such as the acquisition of Rohm and Haas’s ag chemicals business by Dow AgroSciences LLC, a transaction expected to close in the second quarter of this year, subject to regulatory approvals. Also not included is the pending sale of Aventis’s CropSciences division.  Aventis, financially scarred by the StarLink corn issue, has floated sale proposals to Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, BASF, and Bayer. At this writing, press reports have Bayer as one of the more interested buyers.

When acquisitions become final, Appleby updates the genealogy changes on his web site, www.css.orst.edu/herbgnl/descr.html