Year |
Event type |
Details
|
1901 |
Company |
Monsanto is founded in
St. Louis, Missouri, in 1901 as a
chemical company,
[1] by
John Francis Queeny, a 30‑year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry. Its first products are commodity food additives, like the
artificial sweetener
saccharin,
caffeine, and
vanillin.
[2]: 6
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
|
1919 |
Expansion |
Monsanto expands into Europe in 1919 by entering a partnership with Graesser's Chemical Works at
Cefn Mawr, near
Ruabon Wales, to produce
vanillin,
aspirin and its raw ingredient
salicylic acid.
|
1929 |
Company |
Monsanto's shares go on sale at the New York Stock Exchange.
[7]
|
1935 |
Acquisitions |
Monsanto acquires the
Swann Chemical Company in
Anniston, Alabama, entering the business of producing
PCBs on an industrial scale.
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
|
1936 |
Acquisitions |
Monsanto acquires the Thomas & Hochwalt Laboratories in
Dayton, Ohio, in order to acquire the expertise of
Charles Allen Thomas and Dr. Carroll A. ("Ted") Hochwalt. The acquisition was subsequently made Monsanto's Central Research Department.
[11]: 340–341
|
1940s (early) |
Products |
Monsanto becomes one of the world's leading manufacturers in both rubber and plastics (like
polystyrene).
[7]
|
1944 |
Products |
Monsanto begins manufacturing
DDT.
|
1945 |
Products |
Monsanto starts producing and markets agricultural chemicals, including
2,4-D. These eventually become what the company is known for.
[12]
|
1946 |
Products |
Monsanto develops and markets the "All" laundry detergent until they sell the product line to Lever Brothers in 1957.
[13]
|
1952 |
Products |
Monsanto (a major manufacturer of
2,4,5-T) informs the U.S. government that its 2,4,5-T is contaminated.
[14]
|
1961 |
Products |
President Kennedy authorizes the use of the
Rainbow Herbicide defoliants in the
Vietnam War – many of which are manufactured by Monsanto. This includes
Agent Orange, which is applied starting in 1965. These are used until 1971.
[7]
|
1960s (mid) |
Products |
William Standish Knowles and his team (at Monsanto) invent a way to selectively synthesize
enantiomers via
asymmetric hydrogenation. This was an important advancement because it was the first method for the
catalytic production of pure
chiral compounds.
[15]
|
1968 |
Products |
Monsanto becomes the first company to start mass production of (visible)
light emitting diodes (LEDs), using gallium arsenide
phosphide, ushering in the era of solid-state lights.
[16] Monsanto was a pioneer of optoelectronics in the 1970s.
|
1970 |
Legal |
The United States Department of Agriculture halts the use of
2,4,5-T (manufactured by Monsanto) on all food crops except rice.
|
1972 |
Products |
DDT is banned under most circumstances.
|
1974 |
Products |
Harvard University and Monsanto sign a ten-year
industrial-funded research grant to support the cancer research of
Judah Folkman.
[17]
[18]
|
1974 |
Products |
Monsanto puts up Roundup, or
glyphosate, on the market. Glyphosate becomes one of the most commonly used
herbicides.
[7]
|
1977 |
Products |
Monsanto stops producing
Polychlorinated biphenyls.
[7]
|
1979 |
Products |
Monsanto strikes a deal with Genentech in 1979 to license Genentech's patents and collaborate on development of a
recombinant version of
Bovine somatotropin.
|
1980 |
Legal |
The first US
Agent Orange class-action lawsuit us filed for the injuries military personnel in Vietnam suffered through exposure to
dioxins in the
defoliant.
[19] The suit is settled in 1984, with slightly over 45% of the sum paid by Monsanto alone.
|
1983 |
Products |
Monsanto is one of four groups announcing the introduction of genes into plants in 1983.
[20]
|
1984 |
Legal |
The trial of
Kemner vs. Monsanto (one of the
Monsanto legal cases) opens in Illinois.
[7] The case involved a group of plaintiffs who claimed to have been poisoned by
dioxin in 1979 when a train derailed in
Sturgeon, Missouri. Tank cars on the train carried a chemical used to make wood preservatives and "small quantities of a dioxin called 2, 3, 7, 8, TCDD... formed as a part of the manufacturing process."
[21]
|
1985 |
Acquisitions |
Monsanto purchases
G. D. Searle & Company for $2.7 billion in cash.
[22]
[23]
|
1986 |
Products |
Monsanto sells its American-based commodity plastics, or polystyrene, business to Polysar Ltd., a Canadian petrochemical company.
[24]
|
1993 |
Products |
Monsanto's Searle division files a patent application for
Celebrex.
[25]
[26]
|
1994 |
Products |
Monsanto introduces a
recombinant version of
bovine somatotropin, brand-named Posilac.
[27]
|
1995 |
Products |
Monsanto's potato plants producing Bt toxin (genetically modified to make a crystalline insecticidal protein from
Bacillus thuringiensis) are approved for sale by the
Environmental Protection Agency, after having approved by the U.S. FDA, making it the first pesticide-producing genetically modified crop to be approved in the United States.
[28]
|
1996 |
Products |
Monsanto introduces genetically modified
Roundup Ready soybeans that are resistant to Roundup (greatly improving a farmer's ability to control weeds, since glyphosate could be sprayed in the fields without harming their crops).
[29]
|
1996 |
Acquisitions |
Monsanto acquires
Agracetus, the biotechnology company that had generated the first transgenic varieties of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and other crops, and from which Monsanto had been licensing technology since 1991.
[30]
|
1997 |
Divisions |
Monsanto spins off its industrial chemical and fiber divisions into
Solutia.
[1]
[31] This marks the beginning of its pivot from chemical businesses into biotechnology.
|
1998 |
Products |
Monsanto introduces genetically modified Roundup Ready corn that is resistant to Roundup.
[29]
|
1999 |
Corporation |
Monsanto merges with
Pharmacia and Upjohn,
[1] so the agricultural division became a wholly owned subsidiary of the "new" Pharmacia.
|
2000 |
Corporation |
Pharmacia spins off its Monsanto subsidiary into a new company,
[1] the "new Monsanto" - which then raises $700 million in a new IPO.
[32] The "new Monsanto" is legally distinct from the old pre-2000 Monsanto.
|
2000 |
Competition |
Syngenta is formed in 2000 by the
merger of
Novartis Agribusiness and
Zeneca Agrochemicals.
[33]
[34] By 2009, it ranks third in seeds and biotechnology sales.
[35]
|
2007 |
Acquisitions |
Monsanto purchases
Delta & Pine Land Company, a major cotton seed breeder, for $1.5 billion.
[36] As a condition for approval from the
Department of Justice, Monsanto was obligated to divest its Stoneville cotton business, which it sold to Bayer, and to divest its NexGen cotton business, which it sold to Americot.
[37] Monsanto also exited the pig breeding business by selling Monsanto Choice Genetics to Newsham Genetics LC in November, divesting itself of "any and all swine-related patents, patent applications, and all other intellectual property".
[38]: 108
|
2013 |
Acquisitions |
Monsanto purchases the San Francisco-based
Climate Corporation for $930 million.
[39] Climate Corporation makes more accurate local weather forecasts for farmers based on data modeling and historical data; if the forecasts were wrong, the farmer was recompensed.
[40]
|
2013 |
Public |
The
March Against Monsanto, a worldwide protest against Monsanto and GMOs takes place.
[41]
|
2015 |
Products |
Monsanto rolls out seeds engineered with new herbicide resistance, releasing
dicamba-resistant cotton.
|
2016 |
Acquisitions |
Bayer acquires Monsanto for 63 billion dollars.
[42]
|
2016 |
Products |
Monsanto buys a license from Broad Institute of Harvard University and MIT to use the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology.
[43]
|