The Department of Justice has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Deere's planned purchase of Monsanto's Precision Planting business.
The lawsuit, filed in a Chicago court, said the deal would remove competition and raise costs for farmers, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
Deere, which is the world's largest maker of agricultural machinery, agreed to buy the unit from Monsanto in November. The terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time, but the lawsuit said Deere agreed to pay $190 million for the Monsanto unit.
Precision Planting would give farmers and Deere's equipment real-time planting data through Monsanto's FieldView app.
The "DOJ's allegations about the competitive impacts of the transaction are misguided and the companies intend to defend the transaction vigorously against those allegations," Deere said in a joint statement with The Climate Corporation, which entered a data-connectivity agreement in March.
"Competition in precision agriculture is strong and growing in all of these channels as companies around the world continue developing new technologies."
Shares of both companies fell by about 2% to session lows in trading. Shares of other agricultural companies including Dow Chemical, DuPont, and Syngenta also slipped on the news.
Business Insider has reached out to Monsanto for comment.
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