Following are highlights from Monsanto’s earnings conference call on Wednesday:

Glyphosate

Brett Begemann, Monsanto president and chief operating officer, said that the company does not expect a significant change in glyphosate prices this year, and looking ahead, it sees Roundup headed flat to down.

“I don’t see significant movement on [Roundup] going forward next year, but the trend would be flat to down,” Begemann said. “Roundup is a great product, it’s a great cash generator, but for more than 2019 looking back it’s going to be our seeds and traits business that really drives that growth and the integration of the [precision ag] Climate Corp platform, and how we integrate those two pieces together. That’s really going to be the central core of our growth story at Monsanto going forward.”

EU Growth Opportunities
Speaking about the outlook for genetically modified crops in the European Union, Chief Executive Hugh Grant said he is not holding his breath as the process moves “achingly slowly.” He stressed that the real growth opportunities in seeds and traits will be in Eastern Europe, particularly in Ukraine. “Our core growth areas are going to get bigger in the next five years. And I don’t think Europe is going to play a major part in the next three to five years,” Grant said.

Dicamba

Regarding Monsanto and BASF’s collaboration on the Engenia-brand dicamba-tolerant cropping systems - both companies will have the right to commercialize the herbicide formulations –  Grant said that in the next five years, he expects it is likely that the company will be investing in the capital and production of dicamba. BASF announced on June 11 it would spend more than $270 million to expand herbicide capacity for dicamba and DMTA in the United States. Capacities are expected to be on line in 2016/17.

“I would anticipate also that our partner BASF may [increase dicamba investments] as well and I would expect that beyond us, we will see increased capacity going in China and in India as well,” Grant said, adding, “So, there is tremendous anticipation and noise in the market. The groundbreaking work, the early trials have really led up to the performance of the product.”