“The innovation model inside large crop protection companies is broken for early-stage discovery,” says Matt Crisp, a longtime entrepreneur in agrifood and former CEO of Benson Hill.
News earlier this month that FMC would explore a sale after $2.4 billion losses in 2025 is just the latest in a string of examples supporting Crisp’s argument. In fact, most agrochemical giants are currently in some form of structural crisis, from Bayer’s glyphosate litigation to Syngenta’s lagging IPO and divestitures at BASF and Corteva.
These incidents suggest that the model major crop protection companies have relied on for decades—controlling the full value chain from discovery through commercialization—is no longer viable. And it’s strikingly similar to what the pharmaceutical industry looked like in 2016.
A decade and a half ago, Big Pharma faced its own patent cliff as prices collapsed and new-molecule pipelines dragged. It responded by pivoting from a model heavily dependent on in-house R&D to one that invited collaboration with external entities to drive innovation.
Now, ag majors face a similar situation. As Crisp notes, “The stars are lining up for an innovation ecosystem that resembles what happened 15 years ago in pharma.”
The environment has changed. The R&D model has not
Pharma majors responded to their innovation crisis in the same way that big ag appears to be now: by divesting business units, discontinuing products, and trimming research initiatives. Another way of putting it: pharma admitted it couldn’t do everything.
More than that, the industry acknowledged it was ill-equipped to keep early-stage discovery solely within its own walls, especially when it could work with smaller companies that could delve into higher-risk, higher-return ventures.
Consensus is growing that it’s time for the crop protection industry to make a similar admission.
“The major [crop protection cos] have to accept this paradigm shift,” says Crisp, who adds that these companies have been “living off” molecules discovered decades ago and haven’t been able to keep pace with the changes in the crop protection industry.
Median R&D spending among publicly traded agribusinesses has flatlined over the last 15 years, and the focus is more on lifecycle management and formulation differentiation. The rate of new active ingredients emerging in the last decade has fallen off dramatically compared to prior decades.
Simultaneously, these companies face rising development costs, longer timelines, and higher regulatory hurdles.
“The environment has changed, but much of the R&D model has not,” says Tony Klemm, CEO of Enko, which discovers and develops novel proteins for crop protection products.
“Pharma learned that you do not need to invent everything inside your own walls,” he adds. “You need to know where you add the most value.”
For crop protection companies, that means doubling down on regulatory execution, scale-up formulation, manufacturing, and commercialization—areas that require highly specialized capabilities, deep expertise, and a wide addressable market.
Discovery and upstream work require a completely different risk tolerance, culture, and cost structure, one better suited to smaller companies, adds Crisp.
“The structural danger is that the majors keep trying to conquer everything—discovery through commercial—burning capital and time on the part of the value chain where they’re least efficient: upstream.”
Both he and Klemm agree that capital should go towards sourcing novel modes of action and technology from smaller, more agile innovators that can, in Crisp’s words, “take scientific swings faster and cheaper.”
For the majors, acknowledging this and working with these companies will be critical to continued growth.
“Pfizer didn’t stop being Pfizer when it stopped doing as much internal discovery,” notes Crisp. “They just got better at what they were already best at.”
Strengthening, not replacing, the majors
Signals suggest a transition is already underway. Major crop protection companies are increasingly turning to external partners to accelerate discovery—a quiet acknowledgment that the old model of keeping everything in-house is giving way.
Corteva has a multi-year partnership with Micropep to co-develop peptide-based biocontrol solutions. Syngenta is working with Provivi on a pheromone-based solution for Fall Armyworm in Brazil, and with Enko on a new mode of action targeting fungicide resistance.
The logic, says Klemm, is the same one that reshaped pharma: large companies don’t need to own every stage of the value chain to win. They need to own the stages where they’re genuinely differentiated.
“We are not replacing the capabilities of Tier 1 crop protection companies,” he says. “We are strengthening them. The companies that adapt will combine external, capital-efficient discovery with internal execution strength. Those that do not will struggle to generate the novelty required in a market defined by resistance, regulation, and margin pressure.”
The mechanism matters less than the commitment, argues Mark S. Brooks, a longtime agtech investor and advisor.
“A lot of the best innovation is happening outside incumbents right now and they can’t afford to miss it,” he tells AgFunderNews. “Underinvesting in external innovation weakens their future pipeline, slows startup commercialization, and ultimately shows up as an erosion of long-term competitive advantage and shareholder value.”
Brooks has seen this from both sides as managing director at FMC Ventures and at Syngenta Ventures. Corporate venture capital can work, he says, but only when it’s proactive rather than passive, driven by a genuine thesis about where innovation is heading rather than a defensive hedge.
“It can absolutely create value when it’s structured as an external growth engine with a clear thesis on where the industry is heading, disciplined about where it places bets, and connected to the business so those bets can convert into pilots, partnerships, or M&A.”
Growers need a new model now, not in a decade
For growers, the need for a new crop protection model is urgent.
Regulators are increasingly pulling existing chemistries off the market, even as resistance to them from weeds and pests increases. Those two forces, as Crisp puts it, “don’t care about anyone’s R&D timeline.”
But growers need replacements to these tools now, not in the 10 to 15 years it typically takes to get from molecule to market.
Big Pharma faced its own version of this pressure—patients losing access to effective treatments as pipelines dried up and patents expired—and the industry that emerged on the other side of that crisis was more innovative, not less. Not because the majors suddenly got better at early-stage discovery, but because they stopped pretending they needed to be.
Crop protection has the same option. A model exists, the startups capable of taking the upstream risks are already operating. The window to move on their own terms, rather than under duress, is open, though it won’t stay that way.
The question isn’t whether crop protection majors will go through this transition. It’s who moves first, and who’s still arguing about it when the window closes.
