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The Garst Seed Co. recently announced a corporate name change to ICI Seeds Inc. This change followed its 1990 acquisition of Edward J. Funk & Sons (Super Crost Seeds) and was the latest in a decade of many changes for the nation's third largest seed corn marketer.
For instance, since 1985, the Coon Rapids, Iowa-based company has been part of ICI Seeds International, one of the world's top five seed companies, with sales in 40 countries.
What prompted these changes at Garst? Today, who is this company whose roots go back to the very beginning of the hybrid seed industry? The answers to these questions reflect a turbulent time in the seed industry and point to its shape into the next century. Let's follow Garst's evolution during that decade.
A SOLID FOUNDATION. The first change came in 1982, when the Garst family bought out its Thomas family partners and founded the Garst Seed Co.; change escalated in 1983, when a 50-year history of producing and marketing Pioneer brand products in the western Corn Belt ended.
These moves reflected a competitive, mature marketplace. By 1980 hybrid seed corn companies no longer could boost sales and profits through increased acres. Increased competition was the name of the game.
Concurrently, advances in bioscience techniques to improve seed products--primarily made within the research laboratories of major chemical companies--encouraged those companies to begin investing in the seed industry.
In the early 1980s, the ICI Group, a research-based chemical company headquartered in the United Kingdom, began a global strategy to add the greatest possible value...