Agriculture ‘Bundle Mania’ Draws Skepticism in Some Quarters

The rationale behind Bayer AG’s $66 billion takeover of Monsanto Co., and other huge deals in the same industry, is that farmers are better served by a company offering optimized packages of seeds, crop chemicals and technology services. But not everyone is convinced. Bayer is one of the largest producers of pesticides and Monsanto is the world’s biggest seed supplier. DuPont Co. and Dow Chemical Co. also plan to merge, in the process carving out a new crop-science unit that follows the same logic. A third mega-deal in the business is China National Chemical Corp.’s pending acquisition of Swiss pesticide and seed maker Syngenta AG. Yet there’s no real-life example of a successful, "integrated" supplier that has increased profits by simply combining more product lines, said Jason Miner, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.