Upstream Ag Insights - May 12th 2025

Essential news and analysis for agribusiness leaders.

Author

Shane Thomas
May 12, 2025 • Read Time: 19 minutes

Welcome to the 262nd edition of Upstream Ag Insights— the most trusted resource for strategic insights by over 20,000 agribusiness leaders. 

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!

Index:

  1. Q1 Agribusiness Results Highlights and Analysis: Corteva, Nutrien, Mosaic, CF Industries, and AGI

  2. CNH Industrial 2025 Investor Day Highlights and Analysis

  3. Syngenta Acquires Intrinsyx Bio

    a. Distribution is King

  4. AI in Agriculture

    a. Don't sell shovels, sell treasure maps

    b. AI, Trust and Relationships

  5. If every company is a regenerative ag company, then no company is a regenerative ag company *most popular this week

  6. Light as an Agronomic Weapon

  7. Unlocking the Power of Strategic Partnerships in AgTech

  8. Chili’s CEO Breaks Down the Changes That Turned the Restaurant Around

  9. Other Interesting Ag Articles (6 this week)

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

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: 

  • Increase Revenue: Acquire more customers, expand customer share, and avoid displacement. 

  • Improve Productivity: Quickly view customer info, data, and tailored insights across systems. 

  • Reduce Attrition: Provide best-in-class tools to improve agronomist value, income, and relationships. 

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

Index:

  1. Nutrien

  2. Mosaic

  3. Corteva

  4. CF Industries

  5. Ag Growth International

Corteva

  • Revenue was $4.42B (↓2% YoY), but organic growth was +3%

  • Net income: $667M (↑77%) with Operating EBITDA at $1.19B (↑15%)

  • Crop Protection sales were $1.71B (↓2%, but +3% organic), EBITDA up 22%. Pricing pressure remains from generics.

  • Seed sales: $2.71B (↓2%, but +2% organic), EBITDA up 13%

Nutrien

  • Nutrien generated $5.1 billion in revenue in Q1 2025, down 5% year-over-year, with adjusted EBITDA declining 19% to $852 million. Retail was the hardest-hit segment, with EBITDA down 40% amid weather disruptions, while Potash and Nitrogen remained more stable despite pricing pressure and input cost inflation. Phosphate posted the weakest performance, with EBITDA down 50% and negative gross margins due to outages and higher sulfur costs.

Mosaic

  • Mosaic reported Q1 net income of $238 million and adjusted EBITDA of $544 million on $2.6 billion in revenue. Gross margin rose to 19% despite a slight revenue decline. Potash revenue dropped to $570 million due to lower prices, though a Q2 rebound is expected. Phosphate revenue held steady at $1.1 billion, with operating earnings surging to $139 million, driven by strong DAP pricing and a standout March production month.

For the full breakdown, including more key takeaways, insights into tariff impacts, biological segments of the business, margin dynamics, Nutrien acquisitions, key executive commentary, important images and more, become an Upstream Ag Professional member:

2. CNH Industrial 2025 Investor Day Highlights and Analysis - Upstream Ag Professional

Index

  1. Overview

  2. Precision Technology Priorities

  3. R&D

  4. Tech Stack

  5. Smart Spraying

  6. Autonomy

  7. Go-to-Market Strategy

For the full breakdown of CNH Industrial Investor Day, including a look at how their autonomy strategy compares to John Deere & AGCO, their very different strategy on precision spraying, how they are allocating R&D dollars to precision tech, changes in their go-to-market and new focus on dealers, their focus on vertical tech stack integration and how they expect their precision revenue to grow out to 2030, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

3. AI in Agriculture Insights

The above article is a thoughtful approach to leveraging AI.

The author tackles the traditional “sell picks and shovels” metaphor (eg: build tools for others digging for gold) and how it is incomplete for thinking through strategy for enterprises in the age of AI.

He uses the British East India Company as an example, highlighting that they succeeded not by building better tools, but by mapping systems, understanding power structures, and inserting itself at control points (eg: ports, tax systems, trade routes).

The point of emphasis is that real value lies not in being able to dig, but in knowing where and why to dig— in other words, having a "treasure map."

His premise is that most enterprise AI tools today are shovel-like: built to enable existing workflows and reduce costs.

This focus alone results in commoditized outcomes, where all competitors improve similarly, and no one gains real strategic edge. It reminds me of the quote from Roger Martin:

The best way to spur a race to the bottom is for the competitors in an industry to drive down costs in the same way— and for each to focus on that as its hoped for way to win. That is, they incur the same set of costs in a similar way. That approach doesn’t produce competitive advantage.

The point is that thinking about AI with a treasure map mind set enables enterprises to find new opportunities and signals (or blind spots), that competitors don’t yet see.

It has me thinking about AI strategy in three levels for enterprises.

For a look at how the three levels of AI strategy breakout and how a company like AgVend is positioned with Goose in conjunction with Nexus and what that might mean for AI, marketing and unique approaches in agriculture, become an Upstream Ag Professional member:

AI, Trust and Relationships

Humans are relational. Relationships are built on trust.

One question I continually have for agriculture is how quickly we will en masse trust AI for critical and high stakes decisions. I have been skeptical that human trust in AI for agriculture can be established rapidly, as emphasized in The Shortcomings and Opportunities of Large Language Models in Agronomy.

Recently, Theo Merinos shared a well written article titled How Data Literacy shapes trust in AI-powered Agronomy Tools illustrating how data literacy, stakes and explainability play into trust.

For a look at how tacit knowledge, relationships and human trust play into AI utilization in ag, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

Is Your Agribusiness Ready to Profit from Precision? 

CropX combines advanced in-field sensors, research- and AI-driven agronomic models, and a full-featured digital agronomy software to empower agribusinesses like yours to: 

  • Centralize data about your farms, crops, equipment, and sensors in a single platform for total operational visibility! 

  • Optimize irrigation, nutrient, and disease management decisions to boost yield and efficiency. Most see a positive ROI in year 1 from input savings alone! 

  • Track sustainability efforts and simplify compliance reporting. 

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Discover why top agribusinesses are choosing CropX over the competition.

4. Syngenta Acquires Intrinsyx Bio - Syngenta Biologicals

Syngenta first announced a partnership with Intrinsyx Bio in July 2024 with the aim of collaborating to bring farmers access to Intrinsyx Bio’s proprietary endophyte formulations— specifically focused on fixing nitrogen and increasing the availability and uptake of nutrients such as phosphorus and micronutrients.

This week Syngenta announced they outright acquired Intrynsix Bio.

Syngenta’s biological portfolio continues to expand with the ownership of Intrinsyx and now N fixing capabilities, joining other nutrient enhancing microbe company collaborations, such as:

  • Bioceres for biological seed treatments and inoculants globally.

  • Azotic for crop agnostic N fixation in Canada.

  • Ceres Biotics for N fixation in the UK.

  • Intrinsyx Bio has products focused on Nutrient Use Efficiency, including the Syngenta biological seed treatment NUELLO® iN for the UK, positioned as a nitrogen fixing product.

These are all on top of what established Syngenta Biologicals: the acquisition of Valagro in 2020.

Distribution is King

The acquisition details and price were not disclosed.

For a look at why distribution is king in biologicals, why that likely had a play into acquisition pricing, the one notable trend with biological acquisitions and why it’s worth paying attention to, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

Available for all Upstream Ag Insights subscribers.

This week I stumbled on the below image from Top Tier Impact:

There is nothing inherently wrong with the image (though, I’m not certain a “marketplace” or “farmer network” should be considered “regenerative”). But if you look at the companies closely, and all of those commenting on the post about their future addition to the image, everyone thinks they should be on the “regenerative ag” list.

In fact, I cannot think of a single agtech start-up that couldn’t fall into one of those categories.  

That means that if every company is a regenerative ag company, then no company is a regenerative ag company.

Regenerative Agriculture

“Regenerative agriculture” is one of the buzziest terms in the ag industry today. It’s on slide decks, conference panels, and marketing materials. Companies proudly declare themselves as “regenerative.”

But what does that actually mean? There are guiding principles or philosophies by those that led the early crowd on it, usually some variation of the following:

  1. Minimize soil disturbance (eg: no tillage or minimal tillage)

  2. Crop diversity (eg: crop rotation, intercropping etc)

  3. Covered soil surface all year round (eg: living crops for harvest + cover crops or crop residue covering soil all year)

  4. Integrate animals on the land

  5. Less additions of synthetic fertilizers and crop protection products

All wrapped into the view that decision making needs to adapt practices to local conditions and contexts rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.

This all has the the aim (an outcome) of regenerating soil vitality: building organic matter, microbial populations and ultimately productivity of the soil with minimal need of synthetic crop input products.

The reality is: there’s no universal, technical, quantifiable definition for regenerative agriculture— let alone what makes a company “regenerative.”

The label has been applied to nearly any company that improves farm outcomes and minimizes environmental impact: boosting yield, reducing synthetic inputs, mitigating risk (eg: product warranty to improve uptake of new products), improving “soil health”, new crops, increased input efficiency, or enabling new revenue streams like carbon credits.

But here’s the thing: these are the exact things EVERY successful ag company has been focused on for over a century. Helping farmers do more with less isn’t a new ethos— it’s been the foundation of agricultural innovation for more than a century.

Whether it was hybrid seeds in the 1930s, the green revolution in the 1960s, GPS-guided machinery in the 1990s, or digital solutions in the 2010s, the value proposition hasn’t changed. It’s the entire principle behind building a valuable company in a business setting. Do more, with less.

In fact, every synthetic chemistry company could be classified as regenerative the way the industry seemingly classifies regenerative because “technically” each and every crop protection manufacturer has been focused on reducing the total gram/ac of active ingredient necessary for efficacy for decades.

For a look at Phillips McDougall data conveying how a synthetic crop protection company can be called “regenerative,” why fertilizer manufacturers do too, and what the answer might be, check out the link above.

Last week we made the very difficult decision to cease operations and shut down Vayda.

Michael Shoemaker, CEO, Vayda

Vayda was focused on consulting and creating regenerative agriculture programs for farmers. Getting farmers paid for practice changes in a way that all parties involved can benefit monetarily has proven difficult. But consulting businesses have long been successful in primary production agriculture.

In looking more at Vayda, I noticed a lengthy post on Linkedin from one of the co-founders of Vayda, Steven Feldman:

It’s frustrating to see venture dollars flow so easily into apps that shave a few seconds off food delivery or build a meme coin, while solutions that could have changed agriculture for the better struggle to survive. We must do better.

I always empathize with the people involved with companies that have to close their doors. The unfortunate reality is that not every company can be successful.

The other unfortunate reality is that dollars don’t have feelings and don’t care about bettering agriculture. If a dollar cares about anything, it’s risk and returns.

One trend I have noticed since capital became scarce is the blaming of VCs and their allocation, or lack thereof, to various companies.

It’s important to state: VCs do not owe it to founders to fund them because they have an idea, because they have a few customers or because they have an environmental mission.

My view, particularly for companies with a services bent (and inherent scaling limitations), is the need for accountability in operating the business like it will never see another dollar invested.

Blaming the macro environment is easy. Yet, I talk with founders every week finding creative ways to manage costs or questioning every action like it’s life or death so that they can live another day and flip their unit economics to positive.

This is not intended to be critical of Vayda or their leadership, but suggesting a failure in any setting is anyones fault but those in charge is a bad habit to fall into. I haven’t met many successful people who feel the world happens to them. The most successful individuals I have had the fortune of interacting with don’t view external factors as excuses— they tend to believe they can bend markets, shape outcomes, and shift the odds in their favor. I’d call them high on agency and accountability. It doesn’t mean they ignore reality. It means the mindset moves from “if only we had capital” to “how do we win regardless of capital?”

Related: The Future of Fertilizer Report - Anglo American

6. Light as an Agronomic Weapon - Upstream Ag Professional

This week, news dropped that Uviquity came out of stealth.

I need to take a deeper look at the viability of Uviquity in a row crop setting, but effectively the story is that they have a light-based disease control method using UVC chips that are compact and efficient. Their semiconductor-based platform emits highly targeted 222nm light that can disrupt pathogens, theoretically enabling a tractor to be equipped with it to eliminate pathogens, particularly interesting in an autonomous setting.

It has me thinking more about the various light based systems out there for agronomic benefit.

Light has the potential to be a novel agronomic tool, with potential to deliver a new way to manage pests and agronomic outcomes. From lasers and UV to photomorphogenesis, light-based solutions are creating new levers for yield, abitoic stress management, and integrated pest management.

For a look at companies using light for various agronomic problems, become an Upstream Ag Professional member today:

7. Unlocking the Power of Strategic Partnerships in AgTech - Patrick Honcoop Linkedin

A good post from Patrick Honcoop on partnerships.

One thing that has always stood out to me with partnerships is the value of articulating “what is the specific goal we are working toward?” and then defining “what does success look like” for both sides. Often, there are too many assumptions from both sides. I think the flip side is also discussing “what would be considered a failure?” so that there is an ability to zero in on a true North Star for both entities.

As someone who spends too much time reading ag related press releases, it has becomes obvious that many partnership announcements in the agtech space, are more focused on “signalling” than they are truly collaborating to deliver a better outcome: signalling that they are doing something innovative (aka box checking), even if nothing comes of it (to investors, competitors, prospective clients), or trying to associate with someone else’s brand (eg: a more innovative one or a more trusted one).

Non-Ag Video

I love learning about how operators turn around a business. The answer always involves rolling up their sleeves and critically assessing many areas of the business: from the P&L, to the processes, to the people to the customer experience journey. This WSJ interview with the CEO of Chili’s gives great examples of how looking at the nuanced details of every area of the business can uncover significant upside.

Other Interesting Ag Articles

AgTech VC Trends - Pitchbook