Upstream Ag Professional - April 5th 2026

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Index

Happy Easter to everyone!

Website Update: The www.upstream.ag website upgrade will go live April 6th with an enhanced look and feel, enabling ease of access to audio editions, faster loading speed and ease of downloading from the Report Hub and Infographic Hub. There have been no major functionality or platform changes like in 2025, so everything will work the same and no actions are needed on your end.

V2 of AskUpstream is currently in the works and is targeted to launch by May 3rd. Enhancements include access to new LLM models, the ability to integrate your own files, and a new feature that will intake materials from specific, targeted websites that can enrich and augment the Upstream Ag materials, including financial details from publicly traded company’s and investor transcripts so you can understand how major crop input and ag equipment companies commentary fits in the context of the greater industry.

This week’s audio edition can be found here and covers the following:

Below is a summary of some of the materials in the full article looking at themes, highlights and full overviews of BASF, Bayer, Corteva, FMC, and Syngenta FY 2025, plus highlights from Nufarm and UPL’s most recent quarters (different fiscal years than the aforementioned five).

There are more moving parts in the crop protection and seed industry right now than at any point since the 2015-2018 merger wave. I spent the last several weeks pulling apart FY 2025 earnings across Bayer, Corteva, BASF, FMC, Syngenta, to make sense of it all.

The industry is continuing to shift with FMC is exploring a full sale, Corteva splitting into separate seed and crop protection entities, BASF is preparing an IPO for its ag business and Syngenta considering another run at going public. Bayer is managing litigation and adapting to a new 5 year strategic plan. UPL is changing its conglomerate structure and looking to spin it’s seed division. These are happening for different reasons, from debt, patent cliffs, litigation, public market incentives, but they all affect each other, and they all affect the competitive landscape downstream.

On the crop protection side, the market remained challenging but showed early signs of stabilization. Volume recovered modestly while price erosion remained the dominant drag, concentrated in Latin America and Asia Pacific. Channel inventories have largely normalized. I ran a sentiment analysis across four years of earnings call transcripts and the tone from executives has been broadly improving (image in the full write-up). For the first time in several years, the view is that the global crop protection market will grow modestly in 2026, with volume as the primary driver, though price could be influenced now given geopolitical dynamics.

The balance sheet picture is where things get really divergent, with a full look in the article, but a snapshot of the pure play crop protection companies below:

A few other threads in the full piece include some stats from companies, like AI is compressing discovery timelines with Corteva describing 1,000x faster active ingredient identification. Biofuel is creating new revenue streams across Corteva, Nufarm, and Bayer. And the executive commentary section has some candid commentary from the likes of FMC's Pierre Brondeau along with Corteva's Chuck Magro on why more R&D collaboration is mission-critical for them.

The full write-up covers all of this in detail, including a molecule matrix, company-by-company financials, regional breakdowns, 2026 guidance tables, and a look at balance sheet analysis dynamics of the large players.

Technology adoption is always an interesting topic.

The above paper examines the performance of managers forecasting precision technology service offerings, and finds a consistent pattern that forecasted expansion tends to be over stated compared to what actually gets deployed at ag retail locations in the United States.

It’s important to emphasize that the survey is not a farmer adoption survey, it is ag retailers surrounding what precision technology services they do offer and intend to offer in the future.

There are a couple other things that stand out surrounding the survey being referenced in the article:

The survey has a wide array of individuals that are making the forecast:

Many of these roles have varying influence on what services are offered and are not the final decision makers of what will be offered as a service.

For example, a precision ag manager that is bullish on drone/UAV scouting services could fill out the survey accordingly, but then fails to get leadership to support that vision with the capital and personnel to execute. Bad forecaster? Or just needing more time to get buy-in at the appropriate levels?

Or, priorities can change if a retail is unable to monetize it at an adequate level, which might not mean poor adoption, but a competitive business segment — for example, if you think UAV/drone imagery usage is going to grow, and have farmers lined up to try it one year, and more asking about it the next, but then an independent entity comes into that region offering the service at a rate you can’t compete with so you stop offering it to prioritize higher value services, are you bad at predicting technology adoption? Or are you an operator that understands resources are scarce and there is a need to prioritize services that help differentiate your business?

All of the above could contribute to the misses.

With all of that said, I think the biggest thing that stands out to me, regardless of industry, segment or product line is that Humans Suck at Forecasting.