Bayer doesn’t sell seeds. It sells obedience.  

Wrapped in the language of innovation, Bayer’s model is a closed loop: proprietary seeds that require proprietary herbicides, bundled with digital advisories and ‘climate-smart’ branding. It’s not a product—it’s a protocol. And once adopted, it’s hard to leave.  

In India, Bayer’s footprint is vast. Through its Crop Science division, it reaches over 30 million smallholder farmers, offering “integrated farm solutions” that promise higher yields, better incomes and resilience in the face of climate change. But these solutions are not neutral. They are engineered dependencies designed to boost margins.  

The company’s flagship offerings—herbicide-tolerant cotton (pending), hybrid maize and bundled input packages—reshape farming from the ground up. Seeds are no longer saved. Weeds are no longer managed through rotation or intercropping but chemically suppressed. The farmer becomes a client, not a cultivator.  

And the consequences ripple outward.  

Karnal, Haryana — Based on a 2023 field report by Focus on the Global South  

In 2021, a number of smallholder farmers in Karnal, Haryana enrolled in Bayer’s pilot “integrated farm solution” programme. According to a detailed case study published by Focus on the Global South, these farmers were encouraged to adopt a bundled package: proprietary seeds, herbicides, digital advisories and yield-linked input support. The pitch was familiar—higher returns, smarter farming, reduced risk.  

What followed, however, was a slow tightening of dependence.  

The contracts offered no price guarantees. The inputs locked farmers into Bayer’s ecosystem. And when rainfall patterns shifted or pests outpaced the prescribed treatment schedules, the consequences landed squarely on the farmer. Several were left with crop failures, mounting debts to local dealers and no clear recourse.  

One farmer, unnamed in the report, attempted to return to traditional cropping methods the following season. But the soil chemistry had changed. So had the weeds. Bayer’s package had done more than restructure the farm—it had reshaped the terms of farming itself.  

This is not an isolated case. Across India, Bayer’s model is reshaping cropping patterns, narrowing biodiversity and undermining agroecological knowledge. Illegal herbicide-tolerant cotton (not Bayer’s it must be stated, but Bayer has applied to release HT cotton in India and the decision is pending), for instance, has led to the decline of intercropping systems that once supported food security and soil health. Farmers who once grew pulses alongside cotton now find those crops suppressed by the same chemicals that promise ‘weed control’.  

Bayer says India’s agriculture is “backward”. In doing so, it implies indigenous agriculture based on thousands of years of knowledge is deficient and in need of ‘developing’. And the state is complicit.  

Through public-private partnerships, Bayer has embedded itself in India’s agricultural institutions. It collaborates with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), state agricultural universities and government extension programs. It co-authors the script of ‘modern farming’, then sells the tools to follow it. The result is a policy environment where alternatives—seed saving, organic methods, agroecology—are framed as backward or inefficient.  

This is not just market capture. It’s epistemic capture.  

Bayer’s digital platforms, like FarmRise, offer ‘advisories’ that appear neutral but are calibrated to reinforce its own input regimes. A farmer receiving a pesticide recommendation is rarely told that the advisory is linked to the same firm that sells the chemical. The boundary between advice and advertisement disappears.  

And once inside the system, the farmer’s choices narrow. The seed requires the herbicide. The herbicide requires the advisory. The advisory requires the app. And the app requires the farmer to become a data subject—scored, tracked and nudged.  

This is enclosure by design.  

The Green Revolution was never just about yield—it was about control. Bayer’s model is its digital descendant. It replaces the commons with contracts, the seed bank with a barcode and the farmer’s knowledge with a dashboard.  

And it does so with a smile.  

The language is always benevolent: empowerment, resilience, climate smart. But the outcomes are measurable: declining soil health, rising input costs and a quiet erosion of autonomy. The farmer is no longer the author of their practice. They are the endpoint of a supply chain—optimised, standardised and, ultimately, disposable.  

This is not innovation. It’s corporate imperialism with a lab coat.  

And it’s not just about Bayer. It’s about the system that rewards this model—where policy is shaped by those who profit from its consequences, and where the future of farming is written not in soil, but in code.  

The question is not whether Bayer’s model works. It does—on its own terms. The question is: for whom?  

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The above article is taken from Colin Todhunter’s new open-access book Digital Harvest: Unmasking the Corporate Enclosure of Food, which can be read or downloaded here.  

Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is the author of the following books:

Power Play: The Future of Food  

Sickening Profits: The Global Food System’s Poisoned Food and Toxic Wealth  

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order 

Featured image is from Sebastian Rittau via Wikimedia Commons

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