Corteva, Inc. (also known as Corteva Agriscience) is a major American

agricultural chemical An agrochemical or agrichemical, a contraction of ''agricultural chemical'', is a chemical product used in industrial agriculture. Agrichemical refers to biocides (pesticides including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and nematicides) and sy ...

and seed company that was the agricultural unit of

DowDuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

prior to being spun off as an independent

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichke ...

company. DowDuPont announced the Corteva name in February 2018, saying that it was "derived from a combination of words meaning 'heart' and 'nature.'" Corteva became a

public company A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...

on June 3, 2019, when DowDuPont distributed Corteva shares to its shareholders.

History

The DowDuPont agricultural businesses that became Corteva had revenue of over $14 billion in 2017, which would have placed the company in the

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by '' Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

for that year. A major part of the company is

Pioneer Hi-Bred International Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. is a U.S.-based producer of seeds for agriculture. They are a major producer of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), including genetically modified crops with insect and herbicide resistance. As of 2019, P ...

, which DuPont purchased in 1999. In February 2020, Corteva, then the largest US-based manufacturer of the pesticide

chlorpyrifos Chlorpyrifos (CPS), also known as Chlorpyrifos ethyl, is an organophosphate pesticide that has been used on crops, animals, and buildings, and in other settings, to kill several pests, including insects and worms. It acts on the nervous systems ...

, announced that it would cease chlorpyrifos production by the end of 2020. In August 2022,

Bayer CropScience Bayer AG (, commonly pronounced ; ) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include pharmaceutica ...

sued Corteva alleging that they breached contractual obligations related to the development and commercialization of E3 soybeans. Corteva filed a suit of their own hours later, alleging that Bayer infringed upon one of its patents on a gene used in Enlist® Corn, which encodes a unique herbicide resistance enzyme and is part of their Enlist® Weed Control System.

Criticism

In March 2019 Corteva was criticised by the

Humane Society of the United States The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is an American nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare and opposes animal-related cruelties of national scope. It uses strategies that are beyond the abilities of local organizations. ...

for testing a new fungicide on beagle dogs as such testing is required by regulatory authorities. It has said the company will "proactively engage with government officials to minimize or cease animal studies, where possible, and once the industry receives confirmation that animal testing is no longer required, it will cease testing immediately and make every effort to re-home the animals" after it was reported that researchers intended to put the animals to death.

References

External links

* {{authority control Agriculture companies established in 2019 DuPont American companies established in 2019 Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies based in Indianapolis Corporate spin-offs