Upstream Ag Insights - April 28th 2025

Welcome to the 261st edition of Upstream Ag Insights—the most trusted resource for strategic insights by over 20,000 agribusiness leaders.

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This week, the details of the Lavie Bio acquisition by ICL Group have received a lot of engagement from those operating in the fertilizer, biostimulant and retail segments of the industry. In the Q1 2025 Results component I dive into Bayer’s AGM which was dominated by glyphosate discussion— including a breakdown of what hasn’t been talked about publicly: What are the second and third order industry effects of glyphosate being pulled? Supply chain dynamics, technology usage implications, and more, all crucial considerations for those operating.

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Index:

1. ICL Acquires Lavie Bio and Assets for $18.25 Million: Insights and Analysis into Financials

2. Q1 2025 Earnings Results Highlights and Analysis: Bayer AGM, Yara and Valmont

3. Most ag retailers and cooperatives are playing to play

4. MCP in Ag LLMs: What Agribusiness Professional Need to Know

5. DPH Biologicals® Study Announces Clear Modes of Action for TerraTrove® AmplAphex

6. Corteva Catalyst Invests in Puna Bio

7. Agtech VC: Bear Case, Bull Case, and what comes next

8. BioLumic Oversubscribed Funding Round Accelerates a New Category of Non-GMO Seed Traits

9. When answers get cheap, good questions are the new scarcity

10. Other Interesting Ag Articles (6 this week)

This week’s edition of Upstream Ag Insights is brought to you in partnership with Headstorm:

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1. ICL Acquires Lavie Bio and Assets for $18.75 Million: Insights and Analysis from Financials - Upstream Ag Professional

_{*Images appear in full article. Removed for sizing purposes.}

Evogene is a public entity, founded in 1999 as a division of Compugen and then spun off publicly in 2002. Given that Evogene is public, there are more details around the financials of the transaction.

Evogene had five (now four) subsidiaries and three (now two) artificial intelligence engines driven by what they call a “computational predictive biology” platform, or CPB Platform.

The CPB platform is used for product discovery and development, utilizing comprehensive computational biology to find suitable molecules while reducing the time and cost of product development.

Lavie Bio focuses on developing ag-biological products. It uses the MicroBoost AI tech engine for its developments, which was acquired, too. According to their 2025 company overview, Lavie Bio had 17 employees.

Lavie Bio previously had partnerships with Corteva and Syngenta.

Deal Dynamics

The announcements have framed this sale as a positive for Evogene— but the financials suggest otherwise. ICL acquired Lavie Bio of $15.25 million plus an additional $3.5 million for the MicroBoost AI engine for a total price tag of $18.75 million.

Evogene and Lavie Bio were not on solid footing. Evogene needs to focus its portfolio, and Lavie Bio and the MicroBoost engine did not seem to meet the criteria.

In 2024, Evogene had just $8.5 million in revenue, with almost 70% of that coming from “agriculture,'“ which includes Lavie Bio and AgPlenus.

Of the $5.9 million, $2.5 million came from Corteva in Q1 2024 as part of a $5 million agreement from 2023. But, Corteva and Lavie Bio ended their agreement in November of 2024, signalling no future revenue from Corteva:

Corteva owned ~28% of Lavie Bio after a $10 million investment in 2019 (plus Taxon Biosciences assets, valued at $17 million for a total of $27 million invested according to public documents), suggesting the post money value of Lavie Bio to be $>95 million.

That means over the last 6 years, the value of Lavie Bio declined by over 80%.

It also indicates Evogene received around $10.5 million (~70% of $15.25 million) + $3.5 million (for the AI engine) as proceeds of the transaction.

Corteva turned $10 million, owned biological assets and $5 million in payments for the initial licensing agreement into about $4 million (28% of $15.25 million) and no commercially ready biofungicide product.

ICL Involvement

In 2022, ICL and Lavie Bio entered a multi-year collaboration agreement for developing novel biostimulant products focused on fertilizer efficiency. As part of the collaboration, ICL Planet Startup Hub invested in Lavie Bio.

Via ICL Planet Startup Hub they invested $10 million in Lavie Bio through a SAFE agreement (simple agreement for future equity).

The SAFE signals they didn’t receive equity immediately and that ICL would get shares under certain conditions, which were stated in public Evogene materials as the following:

• If Lavie Bio raised more money from other investors, ICL would get shares at a 20% discount compared to those new investors.

• If Lavie Bio sold or went public, ICL would get a share of that outcome based on how big the investment is.

ICL would have the option to invest more money later, and if they did, they could own up to 14.29% of the entire company. If Lavie Bio didn’t raise more money within 30 months, ICL would still get shares — but they’d be priced assuming the company is worth $70 million.

The investment announcement was August 2022, ~32 months ago. The valuation ICL paid for Lavie was about 20% of the potential $70 million valuation.

The price ICL purchased Lavie Bio for suggests the Lavie Bio results underwhelmed in the ~2.5 years since the SAFE agreement and there were little prospects for future success within Evogene. The sale of Lavie Bio, the price, plus the AI engine, suggests Evogene is not seeing anywhere near the demand they were expecting and indicates the upside for the AI engine is embedded directly in a business with a route to market.

For the full breakdown on how Lavie Bio fits into ICLs business and the strategic implications for Evogene, check out the full Upstream Ag Professional article above. Available to every Upstream subscriber at the link.

2. Q1 2025 Earnings Results Highlights and Analysis - Upstream Ag Professional

For the full look at the results, key executive commentary, notable images and more, check out the link above. Available to every Upstream Ag Insights subscriber at the link above.

Index of Topics

1. Bayer’s 2025 AGM Highlights

   a. Business Overview

   b. Glyphosate Implications

   c. Quotes on Crop Protection Business and DSO

2. Yara Q1 2025 Results

   a. Tariffs

   b. ROIC Comparison

   c. Notable Charts and Images

3. Valmont Q1 2025 Results

   a. E-Commerce Initiative

   b. Tariffs

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3. Most ag retailers and cooperatives are playing to play - Dan Schultz LinkedIn

In his LinkedIn post, Dan Schultz highlights a story from a fantastic book: Unreasonable Hospitality.

Dan highlights the story from author and restaurateur, Will Guidara, that he and his team noticed something when visiting a high-end restaurant: there was no thoughtful approach to beer, coffee, tea or even cocktails, like there was wine and the food itself.

So they empowered individuals to learn about and cultivate better products and experiences for diners within their restaurant, including empowering a barely legal drinking age individual to build a beer experience, and an individual to reimagine not just what coffee was brought into the restaurant, but how to augment the experience around serving it to the customer table side with options for how to filter it.

It’s a perfect metaphor for what I wrote in Navigating Strategic Development, Strategy Tax and the Opportunity Around Uncertainty in Agribusiness: Focusing on crop protection products for growth and differentiation is a fools errand.

When we are attempting to sell proven products such as herbicides or bulk fertilizer, we are competing across products that are commodities: their value is known and everyone is capable of supporting them.

Just like trying to differentiate your restaurant on better wine or better food. That’s table stakes.

Differentiation occurs when being disportionately focused on something others aren’t. It could be plant nutrition and soil fertility with unique products (eg: “trash digesters“), or maybe it’s establishing novel services around precision tools, or untapped seed opportunities (eg: cover crops, overseas container programs) or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Will Guidara reframed Eleven Madison Park as more than just a restaurant by turning it into a stage for emotional connection, storytelling, and experience— a place where the experience became apart of the product, not just the food.

Because ag retail has “retail” in it, it gets automatically positioned as a low-cost grocery store approach: buy low, sell for a bit more, get enough products in time and ensure as little inventory as possible at seasons end.

That worked for many years and components of that are still required. But there is an opportunity to rethink what it means to be a “retailer” if a retail wants to accrue better financial results and lead as we head to 2030:

• How do you vertically integrate to become more than the retailer, but also the “supplier?” Or, how do you find non-traditional suppliers?

• Are you a retailer or a solutions provider? Solutions do not always require the sale of a physical good.

• Every retailer has a crop protection expert, just like every high-end restaurant has a wine sommelier. What component of crop management does not get the attention it deserves from ag retailers that you can lean into and plant your flag?

• Where are the unique Bundling and Unbundling opportunities?

• How do you rethink the asset base, employee base, supplier agreements, and portfolio of products to change the capital velocity in the business? Sales should never be the sole focus of a retail. There is a need to emphasize return on invested capital.

In established ag retail, loss aversion run managements life. Entities are incentivized to propagate the status quo because it feels safe and is measurable on a spreadsheet. However, it is actually the most dangerous thing to solely focus on because the world isn’t static— it evolves (see: The Red Queen Effect).

In The Power of Constraints: What Ag Retail Can Learn from Switzerland I talked about the McKinsey “Third Horizon” and I think that becomes valuable to use as a point of reference to think longer term + differently.

Just as Guidara reimagined hospitality by elevating overlooked parts of the dining experience, agribusiness retailers have an opportunity to differentiate by focusing on services and segments that others neglect. It’s not about selling more— it’s about rethinking what you sell, how you deliver it, and what’s being overlooked. In a commoditized world, the edge lies in unexpected expertise, purposeful reinvention, and building value in places others ignore. A retailer shouldn’t complain about margin erosion while objecting to doing something considered different.

4. MCP and LLMs: What it is and Why You Should Care as an Agribusiness Professional - Upstream Ag Professional

MCP, Model Context Protocol, is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs.

In Mental Models for Why the Future of Agronomy is Ai-Augmented not Automated I talked about two shortcomings of LLMs for agronomy specifically, but also why they more broadly had limitations:

1. Data Integration

2. Memory and Context Windows

MCPs alleviate some of the challenges with both of these.

An MCP is like a USB-C port for AI applications. Just as USB-C provides a standardized way to connect your devices to various accessories, MCPs provide a standardized way to connect AI models to different data sources and tools, improving data access and context. It's not just data stores like databases, either. MCP servers can expose various tools and resources to AI models, enabling functionalities such as querying databases, or interacting with messaging platforms like Slack or Discord, as basic examples today.

Evolution

We started with LLMs being basic chatbots with no ability to use any tools, or take any action. We could ask a question and get a response. Very basic.

Next, companies like Perplexity and ChatGPT built out tools and capabilities on top of the LLM enabling them to search, or take some specific action via a connection to a website. This is essentially an API, which works, but over the long term there becomes endless stacks of APIs that may not connect to other APIs, and a lot of edge cases that can fail.

That is where MCP comes in.

Developers need standards. MCP is a standard that external developers can use to build connectivity from their systems to LLMs like ChatGPT or others. It allows external systems to communicate effectively, and seamlessly with LLMs delivering the capability to the LLM to access information and take actions. Data integration and context.

As a future example, if an ag retailer wanted a drone scouting solution that identified an insect problem to automatically alert the agronomist with a list of products that are in stock (via their ERP connection) plus calculate which would give the farmer the higher rebate, schedule a spray application (eg: in Slingshot), and log the observations in a specific FMS (eg: Fieldalytics) you could have multiple APIs stacked on, or you could use the MCP to connect to. It helps provide enhanced context plus enables the LLM to take actions— delivering an agent experience.

MCP can make LLMs more capable.

For a full look at the three areas to start with, why LLMs require bottom up reasoning vs. top down, check out the full Upstream Ag Professional article linked above. Available to every Upstream Ag Insights subscriber at the link.

5. DPH Biologicals® Study Announces Clear Modes of Action for TerraTrove® AmplAphex - DPH

The title of this press release states a mode of action, but the statement above does not demonstrate a mode of action. The statement is the equivalent of a crop protection company saying that the mode of action of their herbicide is killing palmer amaranth.

Ability to withstand high temperatures and salinity is an implication of the mode of action. Just like wilting palmer amaranth is the implication of a specific herbicide mode of action working.

A mode of action is how a molecule or organism influences specific physiological processes in the target plant— whether the target is a weed being killed, or stimulating a crops physiological response for improve salinity tolerance. Understanding the mode of action enhances a companies ability to understand where the product will work best and what it will work best on.

I reached out to DPH for clarity on what the true mode of action is and they shared that they did test via an RNA transcriptomic study. The study showed gene upregulation (of over 10 times) and observed that effect in two genes linked to stress tolerance in plants.

One is Isocitrate lyase which has its function linked to lipid sugar conversion during germination and been shown to play a role in managing salt stress in plants. 

The second gene is OsGH3.2 that is closely linked to auxin and abscisic acid regulation in plants, which are linked to closely to drought and temperature stress management in plants. The response was measured in plant tissue 48 hours post application on V3 corn seedlings.

Those are crucial insights to understand with products.

There is a tried and true approach to developing crop input product markets. Biostimulant companies often seem keen to skip the foundational component of it: Understanding the How and Why

If biostimulants are going to broadly gain the trust of farmers and advisors, there is a need to understand how products work and a need to be specific with what the product works on. 

If you don’t know the mode of action, you don’t understand your product. And if you don’t understand your product, you’ll never be able to effectively position it, communicate to the market or deliver consistent outcomes in the field.

It was encouraging to see that DPH had done the work to assess points #1 and build into the other points in the image above.

6. Corteva Catalyst Invests in Puna Bio - PR Newswire

Puna Bio, known for their focus on extremophile microorganisms, has now raised a total of $5.4 million.

Extremophiles are microorganisms that thrive in some of the harshest environments on Earth— places with extreme heat, cold, salinity, acidity, or dryness. These microbes, which include thermophiles (heat lovers), halophiles (salt lovers), xerophiles (dryness-tolerant), and others, have evolved highly specialized traits to survive multiple stressors at once. Found in deserts, high-altitude plateaus, volcanic springs, and salt flats, extremophiles exhibit unique metabolic pathways that make them capable of overcoming stressful conditions. Some of Puna Bio’s come from sub-regions of the Andes Mountains.

Extremophiles can offer biostimulantory effects, ranging from helping crops better tolerate drought, heat, salinity, and more. Because they evolved in stressful conditions, these microbes have been shown in some circumstances to outperform conventional microbes when introduced to a crop setting because they can increase survivability and colonization.

Puna Bio has two products, with one having an extremophile within it.

"Kunza" contains multiple plant growth-promoting microorganisms, isolated from the Atacama and Puna de Atacama regions, having them considered as extremophiles.

I could not access a label on Puna Bio’s website for Kunza, nor did they respond to my request for clarification on microbes within Kunza, but reading their seed treatment patent, it appears the product includes:

• Klebsiella aerogenes, strain CK1, identified for nitrogen fixation capacity.

• Bacillus cereus strain CK2, associated with phosphate solubilization and plant growth hormone production.

• Exiguobacterium undeae strain CK3, noted for its resilience in extreme environments and contribution to stress tolerance mechanisms in plants.

Effectively, they have created an abiotic stress management along with an N + P efficiency seed treatment product as a foundational component of their portfolio.

Corteva Catalyst

It has been just over a year since Corteva Catalyst was launched. At the launch, they stated they would be investing across four different verticals:

1. genome editing

2. biologicals and natural products

3. technology platforms

4. decision science

So far they have made 6 investments/deals across those categories, with a heavy emphasis on biologicals:

Corteva has the highest reported biological revenue, along with a higher number of partnerships and investments in the biological space:

7. Agtech VC: Bear Case, Bull Case, and what comes next - Tenacious Ventures

My friend Sarah Noel goes through the Bear Case and Bull case of agtech VC, sharing her thoughts on what’s playing out with venture investing in agriculture.

Related: Merging AgTech Startups to Multiply Value and Impact with Rob Hannam - Tenacious Ventures

8. BioLumic Oversubscribed Funding Round Accelerates a New Category of Non-GMO Seed Traits

For more on Biolumic technology and approach, check out this edition of Upstream Ag Professional.

Non Ag Article

When answers get cheap, good questions are the new scarcity - Platforms, AI, and the Economics of BigTech

Other Interesting Ag Articles

Farm Robots, Lost Jobs, and the Real Reason AgTech VCs Got It Wrong - Carbon Robotics

Top 15 Largest Fertilizer Producers (Image by CRU) - LinkedIn

New Gateway to Agronomic Intelligence and First Agronomics Partnership with FarmQA - ExtendAg

The Future of Agriculture: Tractor Wars - The Future of Agriculture (I wrote on some applications to agtech from the same book in the September 1st 2024 edition)

Case IH launches drones and strengthens consortium in times of high interest rates - The Agribiz

Aigen Launches Next Generation Element Robots for Weeding in Partnership with Bowles Farming Company - Global News Wire