How everyone pays the cost for patents on seeds, and private companies get rich from keeping them secret

The United States is one of only a handful of countries that allows companies to hold patents on plant varieties. As a result, a small number of corporations can – and do – suppress competition in the seed industry, stifle innovation and turn taxpayer subsidies intended for farmers into corporate profits.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that two companies control more than 70% of U.S. corn and soybean seed sales, and the top four cottonseed companies control nearly 94% of that market.

In a May 2026 court filing in a legal dispute between two U.S. seed companies, the Department of Justice said patents on seeds are obstructing competition and research in the agriculture industry.

As researchers who work on plant breeding and seed policy, we have seen how that plays out. When huge companies assert their patents, smaller businesses and public plant breeders who often lack the legal resources to fight back are frequently dissuaded from conducting research and development that might actually not be illegal at all.

And a lack of competition allows dominant companies – not always based in the U.S. – to collect large sums of taxpayer money that Congress allocated in hopes it would help farmers, not shareholders' and executives' bottom lines.

Noah Coppess, a farmer in Iowa, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 28, 2025.

A shift in ownership

For most of human agricultural history, farmers freely saved, exchanged and planted seeds season after season, creating a diversity of crops suited to the places and people who grew them.

While some communities restricted the exchange of seeds for cultural or ceremonial reasons, seeds were broadly understood to be a shared resource. Even as recently as the 1970s, most plant breeding was carried out by public researchers at government stations and universities, while private companies focused on producing and selling those varieties at scale.

That diverse and decentralized system also served as an invisible insurance policy against disease and disaster: If one variety failed, there were plenty of others distinct enough to fill its place.

Beginning in the 20th century, though, governments began to grant companies patents on living organisms, beginning with a genetically engineered bacterium that broke down crude oil. Suddenly, chemical and pharmaceutical companies saw opportunities to earn money by engineering specific traits, such as herbicide tolerance, into key crop plants, including corn, soybeans, cotton and canola, and patenting those varieties.