AAI Participates in USDA Listening Session on Competition and Intellectual Property in Seed and Agricultural Input Markets

USDA will host a public listening session on August 24, 2022 to gather additional information about competition concerns regarding seeds and agricultural inputs, fertilizer, and retail markets. AAI’s long-line of competition research, education, and advocacy in food and agriculture is reflected in comments to USDA filed May 17, 2022 in Docket No. AMS-AMS-22-0025. In the listening session, AAI will highlight major takeaways from the comments, which focus on how a lack of effective competition between the Big 3 in agricultural biotechnology, combined with the rise of genetic seed trait technology, has reduced choice and innovation in seeds and seed traits available to farmers. Consolidation has fostered the elimination of the parallel path innovation and joint ventures that are critical to pathbreaking innovation in complex technology markets.  At the same time, as the Big 3 have bought up smaller rivals, they have removed those rivals products from the market and neutered the potential for nascent competitors to grow into true alternatives. AAI also explains how the vertical integration of agricultural biotechnology markets has shifted competition from individual seeds and traits to competition between a limited number of integrated systems, raising barriers to entry and reducing choice.