The Great Unbundling of Agribusiness

Index

1. Overview

2. Business Environment Adaptation: Bundling and Unbundling

3. BASF

4. FMC

5. Syngenta

6. FBN

7. Corteva

8. Final Thoughts

Overview

This week I read the CropLife article Corteva, FBN Splits Foreshadowing More in 2026?.

FBN and Corteva are consistently cited as “starting” this unbundling in ag, but I think there is more to it.

From the article:

There is a quote from attributed to former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale that says “There's only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling.”

That could mean in the product sense, or the company sense.

In the crop protection and seed industry, there is a trend towards to “unbundling,” whereas in the North American retail segment for example, there is a clear “bundling” (mergers, consolidation).

However, I don’t think 2025 was a significant change, and if anything, the trend actually started earlier with announcements from BASF and FMC in 2024. More on that below.

Business Environment Adaptation: Bundling and Unbundling

Business decisions and structures are shaped by current trends and the business environment, including in public companies by expectations of what capital markets view as relevant and strategically important.

Investor sentiment, macroeconomic context, Porter’s Five Forces Dynamics, and prevailing narratives all influence corporate structure decisions and how they are rewarded or penalized.

Not to mention, changing industry dynamics that pressure integration and disintegration (bundling or unbundling), as thoughtfully illustrated by Charles Fine in his book Clockspeed:

What matters today is not what mattered a decade or two ago, or what will be crucial in 5 years.

Consider that the narrative in 2016/17 was the integration of seed and crop protection along with scale was going to be the only way to compete in the market — the view was for scale and integration in complementary segments. This wasn’t just the case for agriculture, but downstream in Food, in Media and Mining.

The trends have shifted.

The Overton Window is a useful lens to make sense of this, too.

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