Key takeaways
- Staff loss. Under Biden, the USDA hired a number of attorneys and economists focused on promoting fair markets. DOGE fired them.
- Bayer agreement questions. The DOJ and USDA announced an agreement with Bayer last month, but it appears to have no legal backing, a situation that one expert called “quite head-scratching.”
- Cognitive dissonance. In his first term, Trump approved multiple mergers in the seed industry, which spurred the kind of concentration officials in his second term now say must be reined in.
Last month, when the Trump administration reached an agreement with Bayer to curb what officials lambasted as anticompetitive practices, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins hailed it as a win for farmers. But she cautioned the concentrated nature of the seed industry required continued antitrust vigilance.
“We must celebrate this great progress,” she said, “while acknowledging there’s much more work to be done!”
Rollins highlighted that the Bayer deal had grown out of cooperation between the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Justice. In late September, the departments announced a partnership focused on generating more competition in the seed industry.
What she did not mention, however, was the USDA had already eliminated — three weeks earlier — an initiative focused on just that.
Under the Biden-era initiative, the USDA hired a team of experts, with decades of experience between them, dedicated to increasing competition in the seed market. Among other duties, they fielded complaints from farmers, and one consulted with DOJ staff about the industry’s loyalty programs, which have been criticized for likely raising input costs for farmers and was at the heart of the Bayer deal.
Explaining the cancellation, the USDA told Investigate Midwest antitrust matters were “outside USDA’s authorities specific to seeds.” If it observed anticompetitive behavior, it would alert, “as appropriate,” the DOJ or the Federal Trade Commission, which also regulates antitrust laws, the USDA said.
The USDA has a clear role it can play in antitrust enforcement in the seed industry, said Peter Carstensen, a former DOJ antitrust attorney and a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. It has invaluable expertise given it maintains legal and economic data on the industry.
The Trump administration could have rebranded the seed initiative and continued its work, he said.
“If you really thought about keeping prices down, you needed to figure out how to relabel that seed project so it would become a Trump project,” he said. “Keeping the continuity but changing the label, and unfortunately they didn’t see it that way coming in the door. Now they’re having to reinvent the wheel.”
To be sure, both sides of the aisle have promised major antitrust enforcement only for the end result to be underwhelming. For instance, in 2010, the Obama administration held a series of hearings across the country focused on anticompetitive agricultural practices.
“People anticipated a lot more coming out of that,” said Mary Hendrickson, a longtime rural sociologist focused on the food system at the University of Missouri. “They were very disappointed. They were burned.”
When Biden was elected, he tried a “whole government approach” to tackling anticompetitive markets and brought “fresh thinking,” Hendrickson said. When she sees social media posts from her farmer friends now, though, she senses frustration.
“What I see is: ‘There’s talk, but not a lot of action,’” she said. “I don’t find this particularly surprising because farmers feel like the federal government has abandoned them time after time.”
The episode involving the seed experts captures the layers of cognitive dissonance with the second Trump administration and agricultural concentration. As president, Trump has largely shown leniency toward corporations accused of wrongdoing. But, as food prices continue to rise, his administration has publicly hammered agricultural market practices.
During Trump’s first term he approved multiple seed industry mergers — spurring further consolidation his officials now say must be tamed. Then, while publicly criticizing seed industry concentration, Trump’s second administration quietly ended the initiative, known as the Farmer Seed Liaison, that could have helped accomplish its stated goal.
It’s a similar story in the meat industry. The USDA has explicit authority to oversee anticompetitive behavior among meat processors, but the first Trump administration kneecapped that authority.
Under Biden, the USDA began investigating Tyson Foods over its chicken processing plant closures, which left many farmers with nowhere to sell their animals, but it’s unclear if the investigation has continued. In July 2025, the USDA appointed former Tyson executive, Justin Ransom, to head up the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, a move that prompted questions from ethics watchdogs and consumer advocates about potential conflicts of interest.
The USDA did not respond when asked about the Tyson investigation, which produced about 18,000 records.
In March, the USDA delayed implementing a Biden-era rule that many farmers saw as a win, according to DTN. The rule regulated meat processing companies’ use of tournament systems, which pitted neighboring farmers against one another and could lead to some farmers’ financial ruin. The USDA said the delay was to “allow time” for possible other actions.
One potential problem going forward with the USDA enforcing antitrust laws is the loss of staff. Under Biden, the USDA had hired a number of attorneys and economists to focus on anticompetitive behavior, said Andy Green, a former USDA official under Biden who spearheaded the department’s initiatives on fair and competitive markets. But DOGE fired the recent hires, while dozens of more experienced staff have also left.
The USDA did not respond when asked how many attorneys and economists focused on fair markets remain at USDA.
Then, in early May, the DOJ proposed settling a longrunning lawsuit against Agri Stats, which provides granular, non-public information to meat processing companies. It has long been accused of allowing ostensible competitors to fix prices because one company could see just how much another company produced and adjust accordingly.
Under the settlement, Agri Stats would need to stop its detailed reporting so competitors don’t have “near-total visibility into their rivals’ operations,” the DOJ said. A judge has yet to rule in the case.
Also earlier this year, the USDA asked farmers to contact the administration with information on anticompetitive practices in the fertilizer industry — similar to one of the roles the Farmer Seed Initiative had. The DOJ is probing whether companies colluded to raise prices, Bloomberg reported.
Carstensen, the Wisconsin professor, said the second Trump administration appears to be taking industry concentration seriously.
“You’re certainly talking the talk,” he said, “but what are you really doing?”
Under the agreement with Bayer, the company said it would suspend for at least seven years two pillars of its loyalty program. The program provided incentives for resellers, who typically sell directly to farmers, to continue selling Bayer’s products. The programs make it hard for resellers to provide generic seeds, which are typically cheaper.
“Enforcement in agriculture is a top priority for the Antitrust Division,” said Omeed A. Assefi, the acting head of the DOJ’s antitrust division, in a press release. “We are focused on conduct that poses competitive harm to both farmers and consumers.”
But the agreement does not appear to have any legal backing, and it’s unclear whether consequences exist if Bayer reneges on the deal. The agreement is not a consent decree, which needs to be approved by a judge and is typically how the DOJ tries to enforce antitrust laws.
“I don’t think a press release is enforceable in court,” Green said. “It’s really quite head-scratching.”
Neither the DOJ nor the USDA provided a copy of the agreement when asked. The DOJ also did not respond when asked if an enforcement mechanism existed in the deal with Bayer.
It’s unclear how much of the Bayer agreement was underpinned by the team of seed industry experts the USDA fired last year. But a part of its mandate focused on communicating issues with loyalty programs to DOJ staff.
The team was created following a 2021 executive order from then-President Biden. Among other things, the order mandated the government ensure the intellectual property system “does not unnecessarily reduce competition in seed and other input markets.”
In the seed industry, just two companies, Bayer and Corteva (which is in the process of splitting its pesticide and seed components), own most of the patents related to genetically modified seeds. These kinds of seeds are used to grow commodity crops, such as corn and soybeans, that receive much of the government’s farm subsidies.
The scale of their patent ownership can make it difficult for independent seed breeders to break into the marketplace. For instance, in May, a family-owned seed company in Iowa sued Bayer accusing it of anticompetitive practices, according to Reuters. This included allegedly preventing breeders from using genetic material to breed new seed varieties even though Bayer’s patent had expired.
The team worked under a cooperative agreement with the USDA, and it facilitated a working group involving multiple agencies, including the DOJ, the FTC and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Its work started in 2023, and its contract was set to expire in summer 2027.
It supported the development of a patent office request for comment on codifying experimental use exceptions for patents. In the seed industry, the exception might have alleviated fears of possible lawsuits over independent research.
Members of the working group convened in December 2024, after the presidential election, to “share progress, observations, and ideas for continued collaborations,” said Kiki Hubbard, a member of the team and a longtime seed industry researcher.
But that appears to be the last meeting. If the group did meet, Hubbard and the rest of the team were not invited, she said.
In July 2025, the Trump administration terminated the cooperative agreement, and the team’s work officially ended on Sept. 9. About three weeks later, the USDA and the DOJ announced its partnership.
Green, the former Biden official, said he remains cautiously optimistic — at least for now — the Trump administration will follow through on what it has signaled is a priority because promoting competition is a popular position.
“I’m open to giving them credit if and when credit is due. At the moment, the signals are mixed. They appear to have maintained antitrust enforcement as a priority, although there are also a number of troubling steps backwards,” he said. “Look, these are things that farmers, ranchers, independent seed dealers, business in rural America — everybody wants this. But the proof will be in the pudding.”
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