Upstream Ag Professional - August 31st 2025

Welcome to the 108th edition of Upstream Ag Professional

Index

1. Q2 2025 Fertilizer Manufacturer Results Themes, Highlights and Analysis

2. Moa develops groundbreaking category of crop protection; signs partnership deal with Gowan

3. VCs Should Still Chase Agtech Cinderella’s

4. The Benefits of Precision Ag in the USA

5. ‘We are very well positioned to lead the deployment of AI in ag’: in conversation with Farmers Business Network

6. John Deere Acquires GUSS Automation to Strengthen High-Value Crop Portfolio

7. Land O’ Lakes Restructures Truterra, Reduces Team

8. ICYMI: Q2 2025 Crop Protection and Seed Company Results: Themes, Highlights and Analysis

   1. ADAMA Q2 2025 Results

9. The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

10. Other Interesting Ag Article (6 this week)

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

1. Moa develops groundbreaking category of crop protection; signs partnership deal with Gowan

2. VCs Should Still Chase Agtech Cinderella’s

1. Q2 2025 Fertilizer Manufacturer Results Themes, Highlights and Analysis - Upstream Ag Professional

Summary

Fertilizer pricing is expected to stay strong: demand is strong, supply is tight, and pricing/margins are firming.

Nutrien posted record potash volumes and raised 2025 guidance to 13.9–14.5 million tonnes with Canpotex fully committed for Q3 and a heavy Q4 book. Nutrien expects the global potash market to sit around 73–75 million tonnes for 2025.

Mosaic lifted potash output guidance to ~9.5 million tonnes and flagged a shift from “balanced” to “tight.”

In phosphates, both Mosaic and Nutrien see tightness persisting into 2026. Mosaic guides 6.9–7.2 million tonnes with record H2 volumes, and Nutrien cites double-digit price gains with the constrained supply chains.

Nitrogen is supported by tight balances and low inventories, particularly for North America: CF saw strong ammonia fill/prepay uptake and expecting U.S. prices to stay supported into H2 2025.

On value-added fertilizers/biostimulants, Mosaic Biosciences more than doubled H1 revenue and targets ~$70 million in 2025 with EBITDA turning positive by Q4, while ICL’s mix is tilting toward higher end specialty products.

Index:

1. Financial Summary

2. Themes and Outlook

   1. Potash

   2. Phosphate

   3. Nitrogen

   4. Biostimulants and Value Added Fertilizer

3. Nutrien

4. Mosaic

5. ICL

6. Yara

7. CF Industries

8. Financial Comparison Charts

2. Moa develops groundbreaking category of crop protection; signs partnership deal with Gowan - Newswire

The announcement this week from Moa and Gowan is compelling.

Moa Technology is a crop-protection discovery company focused on discovering new herbicide modes of action. The spun out of Oxford University in 2017, and use a screening platform (Galaxy for mode of action, Gamma for amplifiers) that has screened hundreds of thousands of compounds and uncovered more than 80 prospective modes of action, with multiple leads now in field trials.

Moa has other partnerships, including with Nufarm, a bioherbicide development partnership with Croda, a natural-products program with NAICONS, and now this partnership with Gowan.

Moa has raised ~$60 million according to CB Insights with their most recent being a $44 million Series B in 2022.

Amplifiers

Moa defines the “amplifier” category as a complementary molecule that is non-herbicidal on its own enables a reduced rate or concentration of the herbicide to achieve the same, or better efficacy. 

Amplifiers could be a useful tool for managing herbicide resistance, increasing synthetic and biological herbicide efficacy, broadening the potential candidates that could be commercially viable herbicides and increasing the breadth/spectrum of control for an active ingredient.

As we see discovery decline, increasing the efficacy and staying power of molecules has never been more important:

The amplifier effectively alters something within the target plants physiology that makes it more susceptible to the herbicide it is paired with. Because of the different modes of action and the different mechanisms of which a herbicide can be resisted (eg: target site mutation, metabolic resistance etc) there are a variety of ways this could occur— to over simplify, we could imagine a change in metabolic capabilities, or an adjustment in the release of an enzyme that breaks down the active ingredient in the plant. Moa did not specify the mode of action or mechanisms involved with the Gowan announcement.

In a conversation with CEO Virginia Corless and Head of Corporate Affairs Alexandra Ranson told me they currently have “several hundred” molecules of interest that fall into the amplifier category that are on top of the prospective 80 new modes of action, which has been their core focus.

Field trials of Moa’s first amplifier are currently underway in Australia, targeting annual ryegrass (Lolium rigidum). Ryegrass is known to have resistance to 12 modes of action. Additional trials are being conducted in the UK in Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum).

Moa shared an image illustrating the change in efficacy of a graminicide in combination with an amplifier.

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