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The golden stalks of corn and lush green soybean fields that shape the U.S. farm landscape would not normally be described as battlefields. But that’s what they are turning into as the world’s biggest agricultural technology companies wage a fight for market share of biotech corn, soybeans and other crops. And it’s about to get bloody.

Facilitated by a series of acquisitions and favourable court rulings, Dow AgroSciences, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Co. and Syngenta Seeds, Inc., the world’s biggest agrichemicals company, are levelling a direct challenge to Monsanto Co., the acknowledged king of biotech agriculture.

Monsanto reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit on June 30, thanks to strong sales of herbicide and genetically modified seeds.

The St. Louis company, whose shares rose to the highest level in three years, attributed the gains to an earlier-than-normal rush by producers to apply herbicides on North American farm fields, and steady growth in biotech soybeans, corn and other crops.

The company posted a 45 percent rise in net income to $252 million US, or 93 cents a share, for the fiscal third quarter ended May 31, compared with $174 million, or 66 cents, in the year-earlier quarter.

Monsanto is discussing with the American wheat industry whether it should be held to its promise not to release genetically modified wheat in the United States unless it can simultaneously market it in Canada, wheat industry officials said last week. Monsanto told top officials from U.S. wheat growing and marketing organizations that it was facing stiff opposition to its GM wheat in Canada.