Corteva’s plan to separate into two publicly traded companies — a crop protection (CP) company, New Corteva, and a seed and genetics company called Vylor — is progressing on track with “so far no showstoppers,” Corteva’s CEO Chuck Magro shared at the 2026 BMO Farm to Market conference on May 14.
Initially announced last year, Corteva’s spinout gathered momentum in the second quarter of 2026 with announcements on the two companies’ executive teams and locations of their headquarters. New Corteva will be located in Indianapolis, Indiana, with a business center in Wilmington, Delaware, and Vylor’s headquarters will be in Johnston, Iowa, with a business center in Southeast Pennsylvania, Corteva shared in a press release on May 12.
With these announcements, Corteva is “on track for a fourth quarter separation” as the separate business units saw growth in the first quarter of 2026, Magro explained.
“The reason that we’re separating isn’t one thing, and it certainly wasn’t to create some short-term lift. We think that the paths for the two companies fundamentally are not going to overlap as much, and it’s going to actually open up other partnerships and availability in terms of working with other companies to leverage the strengths of either company, so that was the thesis,” he elaborated.
Corteva prepares for planting shifts amid fertilizer price hikes
Ahead of the split, Corteva continues to tap into farmer demand for innovative crop protection and seed products through investments in market opportunities in Latin America (LatAm) and gene-editing to develop new hybrids, the executive shared.
“Farmers are looking for technology to drive yield and productivity, which is what we would expect them to do. So, I’d say the year is shaping up probably a little better than we thought. The first quarter doesn’t make the year. The first half is really, really important. Our order book looks good for both seed and CP, so that is coming together pretty nicely,” Magro said.
Corteva is carefully watching what fertilizer prices will ultimately mean for planted acres, anticipating little change in North American but changes in LatAm as Brazil moves into its second growing season, Safrina, Magro said. Corteva is “expecting a modest price increase in the corn technology,” he added.
“The one area that we’re watching with elevated energy pricing is what happens in LatAm. And in our view is that we’re probably going to see 1 or 2 million hectares of incremental soybean production, just more land going into production, and the Safrina crop, which is considered a secondary discretionary crop — it’s a corn crop — could be flat or modestly down,” Magro elaborated.
The ag supplier continues to focus on Brazil and the LatAm market for growth, including bringing its Conkesta E3 soybean technology to Brazil from the U.S., he added.
“We’d like to have about a third of the Brazilian soybean market by the end of the decade, so that’s where a lot of our growth is going to come from,” Magro elaborated.
Gene-editing: ‘More powerful than biotechnology was 25 years ago’
As it prepares for its spinout, Corteva faces mounting competition in the market, including short-stature corn hybrids, which grow shorter than traditional crops, offering protection from lodging and tighter rows. Currently, Corteva is working on a short-statured corn hybrid, while its competitor Bayer is conducting field trials for its short-statured Preceon Smart Corn System.
“The seed landscape is always competitive. There’s a lot of great players with tons of phenomenal technology, and there are some new technology coming in, but we’ll have ours as well, so our reduced corn will be available in the market, most likely [in] 2028. ... We’ve got a natural version, and we’ve got a gene-edited version, so depending on which way the market takes us we’ll be ready when the market is ready for reduced corn,” Magro elaborated.
Corteva has placed “a significant amount of capital” on gene-editing technology to develop these new hybrids, which will include new corn hybrids with built-in disease resistance, expecting to launch in 2028.
“We fundamentally believe that [gene-editing] could be more impactful, more powerful than biotechnology was 25 years ago. Not to oversell it, but I don’t know if we’ve seen the limits on what gene-edited technology can do. We’re seeing higher yields. I think we’re able to bring more disease resistance into the genome. We think we can bring insect resistance into the genome, and we can also make healthier, more nutritious food,” Magro said.
