Monsanto Company is a transnational corporation, a world leader in agricultural biotechnologies. The main production includes genetically modified seeds of corn, soy, cotton and the world’s most widely-used herbicide Roundup.

The company was founded as a chemical company by John Francis Queeny in 1901 in the USA. For more than 100 years Monsanto Company has turned from a small company into a huge group of companies specializing in high technologies in the agricultural sphere today.

The turning point in the history of Monsanto Company was the year of 1996, when the company simultaneously put on the market its first genetically modified crops: the transgenic soybean with the new gene “Roundup Ready” and the Bollguard cotton that is resistant to damage by insects. The huge success of the new products on the US agricultural market allowed the company to cross over to production of new sorts of seeds.

From 1996 to 2002 the company took over several biotechnical companies such as Agracetus, Calgene, Dekalb and the chemical business departments of Solutia.

In 2003 the company declared bankruptcy of its subsidiary company, Solutia.

In 2004 the company created American Seeds for business operations with corn and soy seeds.

In March 2005 Monsanto Company bought out the stocks of Seminis, the largest seed-production company, which specializes in seed production of vegetables and fruits.

In June 2007 the company took over Delta and Pine Land.

In 2008 the company bought De Ruiter Seeds, a Dutch seed company.

Today Monsanto Company is included in the list of 500 top companies according to the Fortune magazine. In June 2015 the company entered Europe’s Top 100 Best Employers according to the Great Place to Work research center. The corporate is headquartered in Saint-Louis, Missouri, the USA.

The staff amounts to 21,183 employees.

The holding group has 404 offices in 66 countries worldwide.

Monsanto Company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.