Monsanto expects to tap Argentine soybean market

Monsanto Co., the world's biggest seed company, said it is confident that farmers in Argentina will agree to start paying for genetically modified soybeans so they can get access to an insecticide-producing bean coming to Brazil.

More than half of growers in Argentina have agreed in writing to pay for soybean technology once their harvest is delivered to grain handlers, Jesus Madrazo, Monsanto's vice president of international row crops, said Thursday at an investor meeting. That's helped advance talks on establishing a payment system with the government and grain handlers, he said.

"We feel very confident we will have a business there," Madrazo said in remarks broadcast on the Creve Coeur-based company's website.

Monsanto currently doesn't get paid for soy sales in the country because the government allows farmers to plant fields with beans saved from a prior harvest.

A payment system would represent a 40 million-acre annual opportunity, as Argentine farmers already plant that much soy engineered to tolerate Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, Madrazo said.