Monsanto Hit With Losses Again as Farmers Abandon Corn Fields

Monsanto on Wednesday reported a loss of $156 million for its fiscal fourth quarter. Adjusted losses come to 27 cents a share, three cents worse than estimates. Sales were over $2.6 billion, a little better than expectations. The world's largest seed producer is going through a tough time with declining acres of corn across America. Farmers in major agricultural zones have been favoring soybean to corn because of the falling crop prices and the trend is damaging to Monsanto. Because farmers have been abandoning corn, corn seed sales barely went up compared to a year earlier. Soybean seed sales more than doubled to almost $200 million, but the soybean segment is a much smaller part of Monsanto compared to corn. Sales in its agricultural productivity segment, which includes crop protection products and herbicides, were up more than 20%.