Upstream Ag Professional - May 25th 2025

Welcome to the 94th Edition of Upstream Ag Professional

Index:

1. Q1 2025 Crop Protection and Seed Company Results: Themes, Highlights and Analysis

2. What Agribusiness Executives Are Saying About Tariffs Right Now

3. John Deere Acquires Sentera to Integrate Aerial Field Scouting

4. Bayer weighs Chapter 11 to resolve Roundup lawsuits

5. The Promise of GenAI: Invisible Technology That Fits How Agriculture Already Works

6. ‘We know what we’re talking about’ – Syngenta Group Ventures spells out its benefits

7. AI in Crop Protection Discovery

   a. Corteva: AI can transform crop protection to replace ‘randomness and chance’ with ‘prediction, specificity and design’

   b. Tom Meade on How Enko Leverages AI to Enhance Crop Protection

8. Data and Defensibility

9. Other Interesting Ag Articles (11 this week)

This week's audio edition of Upstream Ag Professional can be found here and covers:

1. Quick Hits on Q1 2025 Crop Protection and Seed Company Results (5:00 min mark)

2. Bayer Bankruptcy Filing? (19 min mark)

3. John Deere Acquires Sentera to Integrate Aerial Field Scouting (25:15 min mark)

Correction

Last week I made two errors regarding the Carbon Robotics system auction coverage:

1. The Laser Weeding System was for auction, and had a high bid, however, the unit did not officially “sell”. I was informed the farmer opted not to go through with the sale. I mistakingly assumed that a “final bid” indicated a sale price.

2. My math was wrong. I had the total depreciation calculated accurately based on the assumptions made, however, I had the wrong depreciation value per acre off by a factor of 10. I should have caught this error before publishing.

My apologies to you as a subscriber for sharing incorrect information and to Carbon Robotics for the errors.

Thank you to everyone who reached out highlighting the error.

1. Q1 2025 Crop Protection and Seed Company Results: Themes, Highlights and Analysis - Upstream Ag Professional

This week I integrated all of the major crop protection and seed company results from the most recent quarter, all of which are available at the link above.

Additionally, I broke out some central themes and commentary from executives surrounding the quarter and the outlook for 2025.

Below you can find the index, along with some basic highlights from the themes. For the full highlights and commentary, check out the link above.

Index

1. Themes

   a. Market Buying Habits and Channel Destocking

   b. Generic Pressure

   c. Innovation, New Products and Biologicals

   d. Other

   i. GTM Shifts

   ii. Seed Licensing: Bayer vs. Corteva

2. Companies

   a. Bayer Crop Science

   b. Corteva

   c. FMC

   d. Syngenta

   e. BASF

   f. UPL

   g. Nufarm

Key Takeaways

a. Market Buying Habits and Channel Destocking
Most major crop protection companies signaled a reversion to normalized buying behaviors. Variations remain between North and South America, with companies like Syngenta seeing lingering challenges in South America and while experiencing a jump in revenue in North America, while FMC saw a bump in South America and a decline in North America.

• UPL CEO Mike Frank had the most direct statement after positive results reported by UPL: “In FY '25, we saw the macro global crop protection market start a gradual rebound….Farmers and dealers, their buying patterns are now reset. We believe channel destocking is complete in most major markets. We see normalized ordering patterns from farmers, although they continue to order closer and closer to the use season….Further, active ingredient prices are stabilizing at the current level.”

Generic Pressure
Every major player is contending with growing generic competition, driven by ending patents and Chinese overcapacity.

Subscribe to Upstream Ag Professional to read the rest.