LINCOLN, Neb. (DTN) -- A federal court in North Carolina ruled there's enough evidence that Syngenta Crop Protection's loyalty program was designed to limit generic competition and to maintain higher prices for herbicide and fungicide products, in a key ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission and 12 states.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina said in a ruling against Syngenta's motion for summary judgment that the FTC and the states produced evidence that Syngenta's Key AI program may have encouraged distributors to favor the company's products over lower-cost generic alternatives.

"Plaintiffs have provided evidence that tends to show: (1) Syngenta purposely constructed Key AI to prevent or slow generics from capturing a significant portion of the market," Schroeder wrote, "(2) key distributors refused to purchase generic versions of the AIs at issue, (3) generic manufacturers faced significant and sometimes prohibitive difficulties in introducing generic AIs to the market, and (4) Key AI kept prices higher for growers than they would have been in a competitive market."

Schroeder said there is evidence "from which a reasonable jury could find that the program incentivizes the limited distributors to sell Syngenta AIs at higher prices than a purely competitive market would require while effectively dominating a significant share of the market."

He concluded, "Whether a jury would agree must remain for trial."

DTN reached out to Syngenta seeking comment.

The company filed a motion for summary judgment in December 2025, asking the court to decide the case on the available information instead of sending it to a jury.

The lawsuit alleges crop loyalty programs helped Corteva and Syngenta maintain monopoly power by limiting generic pesticide manufacturers from competing with them.

Corteva settled the lawsuit in September 2026 and agreed to dismantle its crop loyalty program and pay $35 million to California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. In June 2026, Corteva also settled a similar lawsuit filed by a group of farmers.

The case against Syngenta continues to move toward trial.

The ongoing lawsuit alleges that crop-input distributors only get paid if they limit business with competing manufacturers. Such arrangements, the lawsuit said, are "cutting off" competition and allowing the companies to "inflate their prices and force American farmers to spend millions of dollars more for their products."

Syngenta and Corteva are two of the largest pesticide manufacturers operating in the United States. Syngenta, based in Switzerland, is a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned company. Corteva, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, is the company formed as part of a merger between DuPont and Dow Chemical Co.

The lawsuit alleges Syngenta has monopoly and market power in the U.S. with respect to azoxystrobin, a fungicide; and mesotrione and metolachlor, both herbicides.

In the summary judgment motion filed by Syngenta, the company made several arguments including that its Key AI program is fundamentally a rebate program and that the rebates are just price reductions.

Syngenta told the court it sells above cost and that under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, above-cost pricing generally cannot support an antitrust claim, according to the court's order.

The company also argued in its motion that the FTC's market definitions are wrong as they pertain to the active ingredients, but the court said it found enough evidence for a jury to potentially accept the definitions.

Syngenta also argued that despite the loyalty program, generic products still penetrated the market.

Read more on DTN:

"Corteva to End Crop Loyalty Program," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

"Syngenta, Corteva Sued by FTC, States," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

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