Upstream Ag Insights - March 24th 2025

Welcome to the 256th edition of Upstream Ag Insights—the most trusted resource for strategic insights by over 20,000 agribusiness leaders. Upstream Ag Insights is written by agribusiness professionals, for agribusiness professionals. Below you’ll find critical industry news, strategic frameworks, and detailed analysis designed to give you a competitive edge and satiate your curiosity.

Thank-you for being an Upstream Ag Insights subscriber!

Rethinking Technology Spend in Agriculture

As agribusinesses scale and diversify their operations, technology costs are becoming harder to manage—and even harder to justify. The shift toward managed services offers a smarter way forward.

Key advantages include:

To see how this model could apply to your organization, consult with the team at FarmersEdge.ca.

On March 18th, The Mosaic Company held its 2025 Analyst Day, looking at the future outlook for their business.

Mosaic is focused on digital transformation, margin increasing product lines, and disciplined capital allocation.

Its Performance Products, led by MicroEssentials, are becoming a key profit engine with strong incremental margins and ambitious growth targets.

Meanwhile, the Biosciences division is scaling rapidly with a target to have 12 products launched by 2026. Yet, Mosaic’s capital allocation reveals a stark power law—just over half of its investments are delivering nearly all returns—highlighting the urgency for sharper focus as ROIC lagged fertilizer manufacturing peers at 1.6% in 2024.

All while laying out their strategy for digital transformation to support improved pricing information and AI augmented commercial systems.

For the full breakdown looking at Mosaic margins, revenues and timeline to profitability in the Bioscience business, growth numbers in Bioscience, strategic position in biostimulants compared to the likes of Corteva and Syngenta, future product expansion plans in biosciences and much more, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

Related: The Biologicals Market Performance: Making Some Significant Headway - Crop Life

This is an interesting interview where Rhishi Pethe interviews Mark Brooks, ex-Managing Director of FMC’s Corporate Venture Capital.

There were a few quotes that stood out to me.

Mark Brooks states the following:

I agree with the statement overall. The key being the “most effective.”

The independent data actually does reinforce that CVC backed company’s do better, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s 2024 Corporate Venture Capital Report:

In looking at some of the $100+ million agtech acquisitions, some had CVC, others didn’t:

I think there is a lot of nuance to CVC being effective for the corporate and for the start-up.

For a look at the importance of structure in being successful with CVC, Corteva Catalysts structure, John Deere’s Collaborator program, status quo reinforcement of CVC, white space in ag, and opportunities for new companies like Meristem Crop Performance, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

Related: Strategic Investing in Ag Technologies With Michele Lombardi of CNH Ventures - The Future of Agriculture

Your Unfair Advantage in Ag Retail 

AGpilot is an app that utilizes Gen AI to seamlessly integrate grower-advisor interactions with vast troves of both external and internal data. Leveraging sources such as Microsoft's ADMA solution for external data, and proprietary data repositories developed by ag retailers, AGpilot transforms raw information into actionable insights in real-time. By automating research tasks and consolidating relevant data, AGpilot empowers advisors to perform their duties more efficiently and effectively. 

AGpilot enables your organization to: 

Transform your advisors into loyal, productive, and trusted advisors at scale with AGpilot. 

The concept of Control Points within agribusiness is crucial to understand if you are serious about software in agribusiness.

Whether that be ERP, FMIS or agronomic platforms— understanding the framework, the implications and how it impacts your business is foundational to making the right decisions in selecting software as a retailer or agribusiness, or partnering and developing product for those directly working in software product, or developing your strategy as a leader within a software enterprise.

In this Foundations of Software article I breakdown the Tidemark concept of control points in agribusiness and then expand on the implications for the crop input value chain, the implications for various software players and how that leads into strategy for crop protection players and the future initiatives of GenAi in agriculture.

For the full overview of how Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and BASF compare on digital strategy, including a comparison image, along with a deep dive into the BASF xarvio strategy and future initiatives become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

PROVEN G3 includes a new microbe blend that increases nutrient uptake and nitrogen-use efficiency on top of fixing the nitrogen. I reached out to Pivot Bio for more details about microbes, pricing etc, but had not heard back at time of publishing.

An additional organism is a natural extension for Pivot Bio, and comes at a good time as they extend into retail distribution because they are not the only entity positioning themselves with a multi-mode of action nitrogen fixing microbial. Nutrien is introducing N-Finity this spring.

For a framework image of what needs to be managed with microbial N fixation, Nutrien executive commentary on their N-Finity product and the modes of action, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

Bank of America Conference Highlights and Analysis of Corteva, Nutrien and FMC Executive commentary - Upstream Ag Professional

Agtech startups have faced tighter capital markets, challenges penetrating the market, and growing pressure to show profitability. Many overbuilt, overpromised, or lacked clear market fit. As funding dried up, and agribusinesses and farmers have been conservative in investing, companies have been forced to cut costs, pivot business models, or shut down.

Two companies have had to take the shutdown route this week.

Hardware businesses are hard to scale. Full stop. They are even harder under challenged ag macroeconomic and funding challenges.

Farmwise is focused on an area of agriculture I do not cover (high value vegetable crops), but Walt Duflock wrote a fantastic breakdown that gets at some of the challenges called Identifying The Lack Of AgTech Hockey Sticks.

For a look at the two major complications with singular system weed intervention units and a framework for thinking about new weed control systems, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

Fall Line Capital was an investor in both entities, signalling a challenged week for their portfolio.

It feels like there will be more companies unwinding in the coming months.

Notable to frame against the “litigation industry.”

The fact that Bayer is publicly talking about getting out of manufacturing glyphosate illustrates this has been thought of deeply on an internal basis. But there may be hope.

A new Tennessee bill would shield pesticide manufacturers from “failure to warn” lawsuits as long as the product followed EPA-approved labeling — a move that would be a win for Bayer, which has already faced over $10 billion in glyphosate-related legal costs. Similar bills are advancing in Georgia, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, and Iowa, where SF 394 reinforces EPA labeling as the ultimate legal authority.

Follow-up

Two weeks ago Bayer announced that glyphosate would become its own business segment, which was covered in the Bayer Crop Science FY 2024 Earnings Highlights and Analysis.

The bigger question beyond simply changing the business structure is asking the question:

When does Bayer decide to burn it all down?

Meaning, stop investing in, supporting the label of, and manufacturing glyphosate, and deprioritize PowerMax and even XtendiMax traits?

For an overview of the need for Bayer to consider dropping the glyphosate label, what that means and what the strategic implications are for Bayer looking at their biggest North American competitor of Corteva, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

Over the last 6 months Upstream Ag Insights and my friends at the AgTech Collective dove deeply into the precision spraying segment to create the definitive guide on what’s happening in the precision spraying segment—delivering insider intelligence that helps you understand what is happening in the realm of Precision Spraying.

If you’re in agribusiness—whether a crop input manufacturer, input retailer, agtech company, OEM, equipment dealer, or investor— understanding the companies, technology and where this market is headed is crucial.

Including frameworks and concepts to help have the deepest understanding of the Precision application space:

Check out the report today at think link above.

Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley have a great podcast called BG2, focusing on finance and investing, specifically in technology. If you haven’t listened to them before, I highly recommend. This is specifically them talking about the state of venture capital.

Is Nature "Human Positive"? - Lance Lindbloom

It’s time to hit the reset button on GMOs - Fast Company

Why all that disappointment could be marvelous for the future of agtech - Prime Future

Farmer Panel on See & Spray - 21st Century Equipment

Collaborations in 2024 Crop Protection Industry: Multi-dimensional Collaborations, Leading New Trends of Technology, Market and Green Development - Agro Pages

Nufarm Announces Unified Brand - Seed Today

ADAMA Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Results - ADAMA

China develops high-protein corn to reduce soybean dependence amid trade tensions - Biz Chosun