Flooding hits DowDuPont agriculture unit

Midwestern flooding will put a damper on DowDuPont’s first-quarter agriculture results. The company says flooding halted farming and delayed seed deliveries into early April. DowDuPont says its ag business, which will split from DowDuPont on June 1 to form Corteva Agriscience, expects first-quarter sales to be down 11% and earnings to slump 25% versus the same period last year. DowDuPont’s specialty product business, soon to become DuPont, expects sales to be down 3% during the quarter. Its materials science unit, which became Dow on April 1, will report sales down 10% and earnings down 24%.