Corteva believes we are a long way from reaching corn yield limits

May 21, 2025
By Denise Faguy
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

Canola as a cover crop?

Joel Jackson, P.Eng., CFA, Fertilizers, Chemicals & Ag Equipment Analyst, BMO Capital Markets recently held a fireside chat with David Johnson, EVP & CFO and Sam Eathington, EVP, Chief Technology & Digital Office from Corteva, about their current financials and expectations for some of their products in the coming years. The conversation took place on May 14 at the BMO 20th Farm to Market | Chemicals Conference in New York.

While much of the focus of the discussion was around financial performance, Jackson asked several questions specifically about new plant protection and seed technology. He noted that biologics have shown good numbers for Corteva in 2025 so far, but it was still early.

Eathington noted that he was working with his sales team recently and that grower sentiment is positive, new products are doing well, corn acres good, and that he does not foresee a shift in the mix.

Jackson asked Eathington if he believed the USDA corn estimates, and he responded that it felt “Pretty close. Still some acres to go in the ground, but it feels close.” He said planting was moving more towards corn, which was good for Corteva.

When the conversation turned to products in the pipeline. Jackson noted that over the past several years, genetic gains have led to about a one percent gain in corn yield each year, but he asked Eathington if that could continue, and what the limits to yield gain were. Eathington said that the yield limits came because of increased plant density per acre. That agriculture science had bred corn to tolerate higher plant density, reducing corn row spacing in the US from 40 inches between rows to about 30 inches today.

He said with some of the new technologies, “I will be retired before we hit the limits of increasing yield.”

Eathington noted that the regulatory world is dynamic, but he believed the next wave of improvements in plant breeding was gene editing. He said he believed Europe will reach a gene editing agreement this year, which means gene editing could be used in Europe in the coming years. “That is a huge shift, it will change the game. “It will let Corteva accelerate yield gains year over year.

Corteva explained their new hybrid wheat technology, saying that they used a different genetic mechanism than competitors to make it stable. It has been tested for 3 or 4 years, and he said people could see it in field trials in Iowa and Kansas trials.

He said this opens optionality of what you do with land. Different foods use commodities different ways.

Jackson highlighted the “Food for the summer, fuel for the winter” project that Corteva was running in the southern US (Tennessee and Kentucky), where they have planted 35,000 acres of winter canola planted in September/October as a cover crop, which yields 50 to 60 bushels per acre. It is a great cash crop for farmers that can be harvested in May, and then farmers can still plant soybeans.

In November 2022, Corteva announced that it has acquired Stoller one of the largest independent biologicals companies in the industry. The acquisition of Stoller reinforced Corteva’s commitment to providing farmers with biologicals tools that complement evolving farming practices and help them meet changing market expectations.

The Biologicals market is expected to grow high-single digits annually through 2035 representing approximately 25% of the overall crop protection market by 2035.

Earlier that same year it had acquired Symborg, experts in microbiological technologies that produced biostimulant Utrisha N. Corteva brought these complementary biologicals together.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”