Agriculture’s New Name Game
May 1, 2018 Name games are something I’ve enjoyed playing my whole life. With a last name featuring an odd combination of letters, people have been tripping over correctly pronouncing and spelling my name since the day I was old enough to understand them.
I remember that, throughout my school days, roll calls usually went “Schofield, Siegman, eh, Eric …” Restaurants in my hometown normally book my reservations as “Mr. Eric.” My one office wall is filled with examples of the many letters, emails, and name badges I’ve received over the past 30 years in trade journalism with no two last name spellings alike (extreme examples would include Sfklaoj and Ugoj).
Yes, names can be powerful things. For people, they can inspire awe or curiosity. For products, they can suggest power and strength. In many cases, names can make the difference between market success and failure.
Which brings me to the current new name game taking place within the agricultural marketplace. For the past few years now, many sectors of the ag business have been engaged in a series of mergers, consolidations, and outright buy-ups. This has combined many of the long-standing agricultural companies into new, bigger ones with many legacy employees, offices, and distribution partners. In some cases, when one company is clearly buying another, the buyer’s name is adopted. In other cases, such as in a so-called “merger of equals” between two companies, all the parties involved tend to believe that an entirely new name would be a better route to take as the new entity formally begins business.
Over the past few months agriculture has witnessed many merged companies adopting (or planning to adopt) entirely new names. For example, in February the combined South Dakota Wheat Growers and North Central Farmers Elevator began operating under the Agtegra Cooperative name. Come June 2019 the combined DowDuPont will begin using a new name, Corteva Agriscience (derived from a combination of words meaning “heart” and “nature”). Crop Production Services (CPS) has decided to rename itself Nutrien Ag Solutions come July to tie into parent company Agrium’s recent merger with PotashCorp (which was renamed Nutrien).
“Our goal is to create a consistent global agriculture brand that represents value and productivity to our customers,” Nutrien President/CEO Chuck Magro said of the CPS name change.
So within the space of another year or so, another set of long-standing agriculture company names will join the ranks of such fondly remembered ones as Aventis, IMC Global, Royster-Clark, and Farmland in the marketplace’s past. As always, only time will tell how long-standing any of these new names end up being.
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