St. Louis, Missouri and Lyon, France
March 27,  2001

Monsanto Company and Aventis CropScience today announced a series of agreements to settle two pending lawsuits and to avoid patent roadblocks to the development and commercialization of genetically improved cotton varieties. Specific financial details of these agreements were not disclosed.

Alain Godard, president and chief executive officer of Aventis declared, ``We are absolutely delighted to have come to resolution of our long-standing issues in cotton. Aventis and Monsanto agreed to this settlement to allow both companies to compete in the market to provide the most advanced technologies to cotton farmers, who will be the ultimate winners of these agreements.''

"These resolutions will give farmers greater choice in the seed varieties available to them with built-in protection against insects and with better weed control options,'' said Hendrik A. Verfaillie, president and chief executive officer of Monsanto. ``We can now move forward with more certainty as we prepare to introduce our second-generation Bollgard insect-protected cotton and future generation YieldGard insect-protected corn products to the market during the next several years.''

The legal actions and the agreements involve intellectual property issues regarding cotton transformation and stacking of multiple insect-protection traits in plants. The agreements provide in general that:

• Monsanto authorized Aventis to immediately commercialize in the United States Monsanto's Roundup Ready and Bollgard technologies in Aventis' FiberMax cotton varieties. These varieties are known for their fiber quality and were originally developed by CSIRO of Australia.
• Aventis has licensed Monsanto under its insect-resistance management patents that relate to using certain combinations of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) genes to control susceptible insects. This agreement resolves a lawsuit recently filed by Monsanto against Aventis in Missouri.
• Aventis and Monsanto also cross-licensed each other under all their other existing cotton transformation patents.

The parties also settled the pending lawsuit in Lubbock, Texas, by Dr. Norma Trolinder and Aventis against Monsanto relating to the inventorship of the Agracetus cotton transformation patents by agreeing to add Trolinder as a co-inventor. Aventis, as assignee of Trolinder's rights, becomes a joint owner of those patents.

"We're looking forward to offering cotton growers our FiberMax brand varieties with Monsanto's proven insect-protected and herbicide-tolerant technologies,'' said Godard. "These agreements should create significant value as we can now work to develop our products and the market.''

Monsanto Company is a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products that improve farm productivity.

Company news release
N3410