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Pioneer Seed history
Pioneer Seed company history timeline
Funk sold its first true double-cross commercial hybrid in 1927.
The company's seed was sold by mail order through advertising in the family newspaper and profited $33.62 in the first year of sales, 1928.
Wallace attracted some outstanding people to his team including a farm boy and recent ISC graduate, Raymond Baker, who joined Pioneer in 1928.
Sales doubled in 1929, prompting Hi-Bred to purchase 80 additional acres and create a Parent Seed Department.
Farmers averaged three hours of work per bushel of corn in 1929, but advances in equipment, pesticides, fertilizers, and especially hybridization had shortened that time to six minutes.
Within months after Perry Collins got his start at Pioneer, Nelson Urban, a 1929 graduate of Antioch College in Ohio, was hired as business manager.
Together they founded the Garst and Thomas Hybrid Seed Corn Company in 1930.
Founder Henry A. Wallace left Pioneer in 1933 to follow his father as Secretary of Agriculture.
Baker became head of corn research in 1933.
The first production of commercial seed was in 1934; a major drought that year meant only 325 bushel of hybrid seed was produced on 75 acres.
The drought of 1934 was severe and widespread across the entire Midwest, and the superior stress tolerance of hybrid corn was very apparent that year.
With evidence such as this, the demand for the new hybrid corn swelled. For example, Perry Collins, working with experimental plots in northern Iowa's Pocahontas County, found that some varieties did not survive the severe drought of 1934.Those which did, he saved and planted the following year.
The corn program moved to newly purchased land at Johnston, north of Des Moines, at about this time. It was renamed Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Company in 1935.
The Impact of the 1936 Corn-Belt drought on American farmers’ adoption of hybrid corn.
1937 Pioneer's founder, Nozomu Matsumoto, develops the A-8 dynamic speaker.
From Pioneer official website, the company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair shop.
Seed production facilities were established in Nebraska, Iowa and Indiana in 1938.
The first DeKalb corn was sold in Ontario in 1939.
Four million acres of the Midwest were planted with DeKalb hybrids in 1940.
In 1941, he was elected vice-president of the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Pfister recognized that he could not produce and market seed on a competitive scale for the entire Cornbelt, so he developed a system of associated growers – similar to Funk’s – that was well-developed by 1943.
1947 - May Fukuin Denki Kabushiki Kaisha is incorporated.
1' Russell Lord,THE WALLACES OF IOWA (Boston-Houghton Mifflin Company, 1947), P. 185.
In time he became office manager, and in 1949 was named sales manager for the Minnesota-South Dakota-Iowa area.
Garst was a very colourful, aggressive and highly opinionated character who had became nationally famous for hosting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during his 1959 visit to Iowa.
Skidmore became the company's fourth president in 1965, and during his eight years as head, continued to refine the farmer-salesmen program established by Urban and Garst.
The DeKalb Agricultural Association was renamed DeKalb AgResearch in 1968.
Newlin became first in a line of longtime Pioneer associates, and managed the production farm until his retirement in 1968.
A high point for Funk’s was the year 1970 when this company’s hybrids proved resistant to a widespread epidemic of Southern Corn Blight.
In 1972 the company added 'International' to its name to reflect the growing importance of overseas operations.
Funk became a public company in 1972 with the name changed to Funk Seeds International.
In 1973, Pioneer went public and reorganized its operations.
1973: The company is incorporated as Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.
After the sale to Ciba-Geigy in 1974, several of these associates formed their own company that they named Golden Harvest.
Funk became a public company in 1972 with the name changed to Funk Seeds International. It was purchased by the Swiss chemical/ag-chemical company Ciba-Geigy in 1974.
A recent venture for Pioneer is its Microbial Products division, acquired in April 1977, and headquartered in Portland, Oregon.
For the fiscal year 1979, the company and its divisions grossed about $320 million, continuing to share its expertise and products with customers from all parts of the globe.
A drought in 1983 deepened the downward spiral: corn acreage decreased by 27 percent over the course of the decade, and the United States seed corn market was diminished by one-fourth.
A United States federal district court of appeals upheld a 1985 United States Patent and Trademark Office decision that crops grown from genetically modified seeds could be patented.
The seed portion was spun off and named DeKalb Genetics Corporation in 1988. (The DeKalb Corporation also had extensive investments in non-agricultural ventures including petroleum.)
In Southeast Asia Pioneer established the Singapore-based company Pioneer Electronics Asiacentre Pte Ltd in 1992 which manages product planning, sales and production.
It was way back in 1992 when the CDJ300 was first released to the market.
Crabb, Richard, 1992, The Hybrid Corn-Makers, Golden anniversary edition.
Fussell, Betty H. 1992.
The name trade name, Funk’s, was discontinued by Ciba-Geigy in 1993 – a sad ending for such an important name in US and Canadian corn history.
By 1995 Pioneer would command 45 percent of the country's seed corn market.
Pioneer was first traded publicly on the New York Stock Exchange in 1995.
1997: DuPont acquires 20 percent of company in a joint venture arrangement.
It was then bought by Dow Agrosciences in 1998 and merged with Dow’s existing brand, Mycogen, to form Dow Seeds.
Always known as a very independent company, Pioneer agreed to be purchased by chemical giant Dupont in 1999 to stay competitive in a rapidly changing industry.
Pioneer began to negotiate a transaction with DuPont and in 1999 agreed to sell the remaining 80 percent of the company's stock for $7.7 billion.
In December 2000 Pioneer announced that it would postpone selling to farmers six lines of genetically modified corn because they had not yet been approved by the European Union.
2011 - May Introduce car navigation system with augmented reality(AR) scouter mode.
Full Statement by Professor Robert Friendship, University of Guelph on Study by Carman et al on Feeding of Genetically Modified Corn and Soybeans to Pigs June 14, 2013
Summary Comments on the Issue of Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments and Bee Mortality September 7, 2013
Critique of “A Proposal for Enhancing Pollinator Health and Reducing A Proposal for Enhancing Pollinator Health and Reducing the Use of Neonicotinoid Pesticides in Ontario” – Discussion Paper by the Government of Ontario December 14, 2014
2016 - Nov Develop advanced driving assist system Intelligent Pilot for on-the-road vehicles.
Comments on “Status and Trends of Pollinator Health in Ontario” (A review by Pindar et al., March 2017, University of Guelph) April 17, 2017
2017 - Jan Pioneer and KonicaMinolta, Inc. entered into an agreement to establish a joint venture for Organic Light Emitting Diode(OLED) lighting business.
2017 - Feb Introduce the world's first BD writer compatible with Ultra HD Blu-ray.
2017 - Sep Release in-vehicle 3D-LiDAR sensor sample using MEMS mirror.
P.A.G. Seeds became a division of Cargill in 1971 or 1972 and the brand name changed to Cargill Seeds in 1987. It is now part of Corteva Agriscience following the 2017 Dow-DuPont merger.
In Praise of Pesticides: Let’s stop assuming that complete pesticide elimination is a laudable and realistic goal – for it is neither March 13, 2018
Ontario Bee Association lobbies for far greater limits on pesticide seed treatments based on flawed environment ministry data April 17, 2018
With Monsanto’s purchase by Bayer completed in 2018, DeKalb is now a tradename for Bayer.
2018 - Jan Company's 80th anniversary.
How and When Corn Came to Canada, and How it was Grown May 23, 2019
The Pioneers of Hybrid Corn in CanadaFebruary 15, 2020
An overview of the Farmers for Climate Solution: Who they are and what’s included in their request for $300 million from Ottawa March 8, 2021
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Pioneer Seed competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monsanto | 2000 | $14.6B | 25,500 | - |
| Beck's Hybrids | 1937 | $15.0M | 69 | 48 |
| Mycogen | 1982 | $150.0M | 300 | - |
| Stonyfield | 1983 | $5.4M | 498 | - |
| Real Time Farms | 2010 | $180,000 | 3 | 3 |
| Gaia Herbs | 1986 | $45.7M | 50 | 11 |
| Agri Mark | 1916 | $510,000 | 5 | 36 |
| J.R. Simplot | 1955 | - | 10,002 | - |
| A.I.S | 1988 | - | 240 | 40 |
Pioneer Seed history FAQs
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Pioneer Seed may also be known as or be related to Dupont Pioneer, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc, Pioneer Hybrid International, Dupont Agriculture and Nutrition, Pioneer Seed, Pioneer Hi-Bred and Pioneer Hi Bred International Inc.