Investigate Midwest - In tough times, they sold farmers cheaper fungicides. A top manufacturer, Syngenta, intervened.

Food systems program manager Claire Kelloway was quoted emphasizing that generic pesticide makers should be allowed to compete, as they offer farmers more affordable options and help lower costs in a concentrated market.

Brian Heinze was out to lunch when he received the call to return to the office. It was early 2015, and his Oregon-based business, just a couple of years old, had quickly grown. It sold generic pesticides — cheaper alternatives for farmers at a time when the agriculture economy was faltering. After the call, Heinze rushed back. A man had been waiting to serve him papers.

One of the world’s most profitable pesticide companies, Syngenta, was suing him. 

Heinze’s company, Willowood USA, had started competing against a flagship Syngenta product, a fungicide that kills crop diseases. The company’s money-printing fungicide’s chemical backbone — an active ingredient named azoxystrobin — had recently gone off patent. Now generic producers like Willowood could make their own versions, and Syngenta was losing money.

Syngenta had tried to box out Willowood by incentivizing retailers to only carry its products, and now it was going to court. It alleged Willowood and its business partners in China infringed on patented technology. 

Heinze was unnerved, but he decided to project an image of confidence to his staff. “If anything, it motivated us more to kick them in the you know what,” he said. “If this is a game you want to play, we know how to play it as well.” Willowood was on solid ground, he thought.

Patents reward innovation by allowing a temporary monopoly over a product. They’re not meant to deter competition indefinitely. 

But the Willowood episode illustrates how the U.S. pesticide industry, controlled by a handful of mammoth multinational corporations, has tried to extend profitability for years after patents expire — often at the expense of struggling farmers, according to Investigate Midwest’s review of government and court records, and interviews with several people who have knowledge of the pesticide industry.

Generic pesticide products are supposed to provide cheaper alternatives to farmers who can often be squeezed between heavy expenses and sagging sales. Since 2004, pesticide prices have increased about 40%, peaking in 2022.

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