WASHINGTON COURT HOUSE, Ohio – Indiana-based Corteva Agriscience has consolidated four of its brands under the name of Hoegemeyer Seeds. The change was made in early July.

Hoegemeyer Seeds, headquartered in Hooper, Neb.; Seed Consultants, Inc. (SCI), based in Washington Court House; Wisconsin-based Dairyland; and Illinois and Iowa-based NuTech, are all owned by Corteva. The consolidation was viewed as part of a larger merging trend in the seed industry over the past 10 or so years that has drawn negative attention from agricultural experts and lawmakers.

Field signs noting the consolidation were to be switched over for the remainder of the 2026 growing season. The consolidation was announced in a single, short Facebook post on May 7.

“Products offered today will continue to be offered in the future,” a spokesperson told Farm World. “This transition will allow more agility in supply management, especially in-season as acreage swings and grower needs change.

“Hoegemeyer Master Plot events are taking place across the U.S. in July, August and September,” the spokesperson continued. “These are hosted and managed by local Hoegemeyer agronomists and dealers. Growers can contact their local Hoegemeyer representative to learn about upcoming event details happening near them.”

Corteva would not comment on or provide numbers on Seed Consultant job losses due to the consolidation, and no former employees would speak to Farm World. With an estimated SCI Washington Court House office and warehouse workforce of between 10 and 20 and more office and sales workers in other parts of its former territory, SCI employees were given severance pay or early retirement, a source said.

SCI began as a locally owned brand in Washington Court House in 1990. Founders Chris Jeffries and Dan Fox said they started the company to bring advanced seed genetics directly to the farmer without middlemen. Jeffries, an Indiana native, was a one-time high school agriculture teacher and Fox, an Ohio native, a seed salesman.

SCI grew to become the largest independent Ohio seed company in 2010 with gross sales of $42 million. In 2000, the company built a state-of-the-art conditioning facility on the outskirts of Washington Court House, with a capacity of one million soybean and wheat units. It bought another warehouse in Sabina, Ohio, in 2009, to provide additional storage space.

The firm also purchased the retail seed sales of Warner Seeds of Bradford, Ohio, in 2001, and entered into a long-term agreement with Warner for irrigated production of hybrid seed corn, including spending $3.5 million in new construction and renovation of their seed corn plants.

Jeffries and Fox sold the company in late 2010 to DuPont through its Pioneer Hi-Bred seed business. Jeffries and Fox, who passed away in 2020, continued to operate SCI in Washington Court House until about 2015, selling seed in 15 states, including Indiana and Ohio.

Corteva was spun off from DowDuPont as an independent publicly traded company in 2019. DowDuPont is itself the result of the merger of DuPont/Pioneer and Dow Chemical Co. in 2015.

“The consolidation of the agrochemical and seed industries, especially in the last few years, has raised a number of concerns about this growing concentration of power,” Michigan State University Community Sustainability Professor Philip Howard has said.

“This is corporate capture of the very first link in our food chain,” U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) told a Senate hearing on seed combinations last October. “When you control the seed, you have unjust control over farmers, and ultimately you control the food.”

Corteva announced last October that it was splitting into two publicly traded entities. A “new” Corteva would concentrate on crop protection products including herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and biologicals. Meanwhile, the company’s seed genetics business would be switched to a then-unnamed spinoff company.

The consolidation involving SCI has led to some confusion.

“People in other parts (of Ohio) are asking what’s going on,” said Ken Ford, Fayette County Extension educator and agent. “It’s been like a big secret that even people around here don’t know about.”

Kimberly Penwell, Washington Court House-based AIM Media Midwest market director, said, “Not everybody looks at Facebook. As far as I know, it’s still Seed Consultants.”