...And Then There Were Four?

The five company executives were literally elbow to elbow, but they all fit at the narrow table where they sat facing a stern semi-circle of U.S. senators. They were in D.C. representing five of the "Big Six" agricultural companies and testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in defense of the two massive mergers and a key corporate purchase underway. Squeezed in next to them were four other representatives from the American Antitrust Institute, the American Farm Bureau, the National Corn Growers Association and the National Farmers Union. A number of senators remarked on how tightly the Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow AgroSciences executives were squeezed in. "I don't think I've been at a hearing of the Judiciary committee where there have been this many witnesses at one table," marveled Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, at one point. From my perch at the press table, he was incredulous about the wrong thing. Together, those five men in one room represented the majority of the global seed and agro-chemical industry. If BASF (who, from the outside, must look like the only girl at the dance without a date these days) had been there, the picture would be pretty much complete. Soon -- if the Department of Justice gives Dow and DuPont the go-ahead to merge and approves Bayer's purchase of Monsanto -- just four executives (and their stockholders) will have great control of that industry.