Upstream Ag Professional - November 30th 2025

Welcome to the 121st edition of Upstream Ag Professional

Index

1. Q3 2025 Equipment Manufacturers Results Highlights and Analysis

2. Retailers Need to Take a Stand

3. The AgTech Paradox: What Biology Can Teach Us About Innovation and AgTech

4. Have we hit the tipping point for autonomy in ag? With Shane Thomas and Matthew Pryor

5. Syngenta Is Said to Mull Hong Kong IPO After Shanghai Pulled

6. Kilter and Kubota Partner

7. Short-stature maize systems reduce carbon intensity of grain production by an average of 13% compared to commercially relevant tall comparators

8. Lavoro Limited Announces Restructuring Plan Ratification, Leadership Changes and Crop Care Sale

9. What has Changed the Most for Strategy

10. Other Interesting Ag Articles (12 this week)

Thank you for being an Upstream Ag Professional member! I hope all of you based in the United States had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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

1. Highlights of multiple stories

2. Retailers Need to Take a Stand

1. Q3 2025 Equipment Manufacturers Results Highlights and Analysis - Upstream Ag Professional

Index

1. Themes

2. John Deere

3. CNH

4. AGCO

5. Titan Machinery

Highlights

• 2026 as the "Trough": The consensus across all majors is that North American large ag demand will contract, with Deere specifically citing ~15–20% in 2026. However, executives view this as the cyclical bottom.

• Tech: AGCO reports retrofit sales are not declining as much as equipment and has emphasized dealers as well, such as offering Dealer-Managed Inventory which is an ML models to analyze sensor data to predict failure and automate ordering, improving outcomes for farmers and dealers. Early adopting dealers report inventory stock decreases while parts sales increase. Deere continues to see growth in base precision (24,000 retrofit kits), connectivity (8,000 JDLink Boost orders), 500 million engaged acres in Operations Center (up 10% YoY), 5 million See & Spray acres (up from 1 million) and launching autonomous tillage for 2026 delivery.

• Structural Margin Resilience vs. 2016: Despite volume declines comparable to the 2016 downturn, OEMs are broadly more profitable. Deere noted margins are ~450 basis points higher than the last time the cycle was at this point.

2. Retailers Need to Take a Stand - Stratus

Key Takeaway

• Product recommendations matter to 78% of farmers, a top 4 consideration for whether they buy from a retail, yet roughly a quarter of retail staff make no product recommendations at all. Notably, a recommendation of a product drives a sale 45% of the time vs. just 15% when none is given by the retailer.

In a recent study, Stratus found that 78% of farmers said that recommendations are important to them from their ag retailers.

What’s interesting, is that Stratus also found that about 25% of retail people do not recommend any specific product across multiple product segment types.

They also found that 45% of the time, if a retailer highly recommends a product, the farm customer will use that product. If a product is not recommended by the retailer, the sales success rate drops to just 15%.

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