FTC Settles Exclusive Dealing Case with Corteva, DOJ Seeks Input on Egg Price-Fixing Settlement
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In keeping with the Trump administration’s pro-business bent, federal antitrust enforcers settled another case ahead of trial, this time a lawsuit against pesticide giant Corteva. This follows recent settlements in other agricultural antitrust cases targeting meatpackers, John Deere, and egg companies. While going to trial is risky, court victories can set important legal precedent and secure stricter penalties. The public has a chance to comment on one of these settlements, the Justice Department’s deal with price-fixing egg companies.
Corteva Will End Part of its Pesticide Loyalty Program
The Biden administration sued dominant pesticide companies for blocking farmers’ access to cheaper, generic products. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged that Corteva and Syngenta penalized pesticide distributors that did business with their generic competitors by offering them substantial “loyalty” payments in exchange for exclusive purchasing. The FTC alleged that some distributors elected not to carry any generic products to avoid the “severe financial consequences” of losing these payments.
On Monday, the FTC and 12 state attorneys general settled with one party to the suit, Corteva. Litigation against Syngenta continues.
As part of the settlement, Corteva will stop offering certain kinds of pesticide loyalty payments and pay the states $35 million. This could create new openings for generic pesticide providers to access distribution and ultimately provide cheaper options for farmers. However, the settlement leaves parts of Corteva’s loyalty program intact and does little to deter exclusive dealing in other markets.
The FTC’s lawsuit focused on exclusive deals for pesticides with certain active ingredients. Active ingredients are the specific chemicals, molecules, or components in a pesticide or herbicide that kill or control pests – active ingredients represent just a fraction of the final pesticide product, but they’re the main thing that makes them work. Agrichemical corporations patent active ingredients, giving them the initial monopoly on selling new chemicals that they create. But once these chemicals come off patent, generic competitors can produce cheaper products with the same active ingredients. This is where the FTC and state attorneys general alleged that Corteva and Syngenta used lucrative exclusionary payments to entice distributors to carry mostly their branded products and limit their business with generic competitors.
Under the settlement, Corteva cannot offer customers payments or perks in exchange for purchasing 50% or more of their pesticides from Corteva over the next decade. This applies to products containing Corteva’s off-patent active ingredients. The corporation can still offer loyalty payments based on purchasing volumes, but critically, it cannot structure these payments in ways that effectively require customers to purchase most of their products from Corteva. Corteva also cannot require customers to continue doing business with them for years after receiving a loyalty payment.
The settlement also protects distributors from retaliation for carrying competitors’ products. The goal is for pesticide distributors to feel free to carry generic versions of Corteva’s brand name chemicals without fear of retaliation or financial retribution.
With the limit set at 50%, Corteva can technically extend loyalty payments to customers who commit to buy 49% or less of their products containing certain active ingredients from Corteva. It also asserts that Corteva can offer rebates and bonuses tied to a 49% or less purchase share requirement in loyalty programs covering whole categories of products, such as “insecticides,” that include a mix of products with on- and off-patent ingredients At these thresholds, there’s a risk that this settlement endorses conduct that may still violate the antitrust laws. “If two of the biggest suppliers can essentially engage in exclusive dealing on 49% of their volume, at least in the past, that is the kind of thing that could violate Clayton Act Section 3,” said law professor John Newman, former deputy director of the FTC’s competition bureau.
The government could have demanded that Corteva stop all loyalty programs that condition payments on any form of exclusivity. When the Department of Justice took a dental supply corporation to trial for exclusive dealing in the early 2000s, the court ordered that the defendant, Dentsply, “shall not explicitly or implicitly condition the sale of its teeth or any other product to a dealer based to any extent on that dealer’s sale of non-Dentsply teeth.” In other words, the court demanded a full ban on requirements to limit business with competitors.
Corteva’s settlement will only last 10 years, which is not uncommon for recent antitrust consent decrees, but arguably not long enough to inject meaningful new competition into a slow-moving and highly consolidated market such as agrichemicals.
Corteva is not the only Big Ag corporation to engage in alleged commercial bribery; major food manufacturers offer rebates and promotional payments to lock in large swaths of all sales with cafeteria contractors and major grocery chains. Just like pesticide distributors, many food retailers have come to rely on these monopoly payments as part of their business model. The top three cafeteria contractors, for instance, may derive as much as 50% of their net profits from loyalty rebates. These programs lock out competitors and effectively limit new entrants to a small portion of the market. This keeps the same dominant corporations in control of critical industries, locking in harmful crop production systems and highly processed foods.
This settlement does not effectively deter future Big Food bribes. “[Other companies] get the message that even if you cross the line, you won’t have to go to trial … you are still going to be allowed to do some of the conduct, and you’ll pay a penalty that may not even be equal to all the rents you took in,” explains Newman. “This settlement is better than nothing, but it’s hard to believe that it will create a strong deterrent.”
DOJ Seeks Comments on Settlement in Egg Price-Fixing Investigation
Egg prices famously reached record highs between 2022 and 2025; the national average price for a dozen peaked at $6 in May 2025. The industry blamed bird flu, which did lower the egg supply, but antitrust investigations alleged a larger conspiracy at work.
Egg executives allegedly worked together to manipulate a price index tied to most conventional egg contracts, produced by a company called Urner Barry. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and state attorneys general collected damning messages between competing egg executives coordinating bids in the egg cash market to influence Urner Barry market reporters. Executives allegedly paid premiums on uncommitted eggs and directly lobbied Urner Barry to ignore lower prices from some competitors, all to drive up Urner Barry’s egg price quotes, which in turn drove up the price that most grocery stores and restaurant chains paid for eggs.
Egg executives deny wrongdoing. This summer, the DOJ and 17 states reached a settlement with Cal-Maine, Versova, and Hickman’s to donate 53 million eggs and pay $3.3 million. Farm Action estimates that Cal-Maine’s settlement obligation totals less than half of one percent of its 2025 annual profits, merely the cost of doing business to triple profits.
Cal-Maine, Hickman’s, and Versova also agreed to cease sharing information about their bidding strategies or prices with competitors, create an antitrust compliance policy, and regularly certify to the DOJ and State AGs that they are abiding by the agreement. These behavioral commitments may prevent future price-fixing; however, antitrust settlements are notoriously difficult to enforce.
Advocates worry that this settlement will not deter food executives from price-fixing in the future. Courts need to ensure that all antitrust settlements with the DOJ are in the public interest under an anti-corruption law called the Tunney Act. The public has a chance to weigh in on the DOJ’s proposed egg settlement through a comment period that closes October 17. However, some antitrust scholars argue that the Tunney Act process is broken because courts give too much deference to the DOJ and rubber stamp nearly all settlements.
What We’re Reading
Cattlemen’s groups in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas say that ICE enforcement is disrupting feedlot and meatpacking operations, interfering with the beef supply chain and driving up prices. Two Republican Senators backed the cattle groups. (New York Times)
Farmland is becoming an attractive asset for data center corporations and investors. (The Daily Yonder)
In a new poll, eight out of 10 rural voters said the Trump administration’s MAHA policies “had a negative effect or no impact on the health of people where they live.” (Mother Jones)