Welcome to the 75th Edition of Upstream Ag Professional!
Happy New Year!
I hope you had a wonderful Holiday Season and your 2025 is off to a fantastic start.
Index:
Illustrative AgTech Insights: The Last Mile Driving Product Decisions and Experience in Agribusiness
John Deere Autonomy Announcement at CES: Autonomous Functionality, But Can They Replace the Judgement?
Digital platforms in the agricultural sector: Dynamics of oligopolistic platformization
Monopolistic Inertia
Bayer Crop Science and BioFuel Announcements
Bayer Acquires Camelina Assets from Smart Earth Camelina Corp. to Advance Biofuels
Bayer and Neste to Collaborate on Developing Feedstocks for Renewable Fuels
Lindsay Corporation Reports Fiscal 2025 First Quarter Results + Finalizes Pessl Minority Position
Artificial intelligence is speeding up the development of the next generation of biostimulants
Inari Raises $144 Million, Paving Path to Long-Term Growth
Other Interesting Ag Articles (7 this week)
During the Holiday break I didn’t publish, but I still aggregated notable ag related articles. For those interested, check out the below:
Upstream Ag Professional - December 23rd 2024 to January 7th 2025
1. Illustrative AgTech Insights: The Last Mile Driving Product Decisions in Agribusiness - Upstream Ag Professional
Key Takeaways
Farmers aren’t blindly loyal to equipment brands, but very influenced by the experience around the brand— the support, the service, the people available once they have already made a purchase decision.
The local retailer drives farmer product usage with sales success more than doubling when a retailer recommends a product.
For direct-to-farm and traditional farm service providers, experience mapping can be a useful tool and process used to analyze the journey and customer friction points.
This edition of Illustrative Agtech Insights includes four images from survey data that can be useful in understanding the influence of localized farmer support on product and brand utilization.
Index
Ag Equipment Intelligence Brand Loyalty Survey
Stratus Ag Research Boosting Ag Retailer Success Survey Data
Stratus Ag Research Biostimulant Route to Farm and Customer Product Perception
Direct-to-Farmer Models
Pivot Bio
Indigo Ag
Meristem Crop Performance
Swarm Farm
Experience Mapping
Friction Reduction
Final Thoughts
2. John Deere Autonomy Announcement at CES: Autonomous Functionality, But Can They Replace the Judgement? - YouTube
Key Takeaways
Autonomous 9RX Tractor for Large-Scale Agriculture — With the second-generation autonomy kit, featuring 16 individual cameras arranged to enable a 360-degree view of the field, the system calculates depth more accurately at larger distances, allowing the tractor to pull wider equipment and drive faster. The offering is for tillage initially and will be adding planter and grain cart autonomy.
Combine and sprayer autonomy require new sensor technology and were not touched on during CES.
Driving is only one component of what the labor does in the cab.
Good equipment operators also exercise judgement of what is occurring with the implement that the tractor is pulling, then reason and react accordingly. What is John Deere doing to replace judgement? They did not share details during the event.
John Deere revealed several new autonomous machines during a press conference at CES 2025 to support customers in agriculture, construction, and commercial landscaping. Building on Deere's autonomous technology first revealed at CES 2022, the company's second-generation autonomy kit combines advanced computer vision, AI, and cameras to help the machines navigate their environments.
John Deere specifically announced four machines, with the following two offerings specific for agriculture:
Autonomous 9RX Tractor for Large-Scale Agriculture — With the second-generation autonomy kit, featuring 16 individual cameras arranged in pods to enable a 360-degree view of the field, the kit calculates depth more accurately at larger distances, allowing the tractor to pull wider equipment and drive faster. The offering is for tillage initially and will be adding planter and grain cart functionality.
Autonomous 5ML Orchard Tractor for Air Blast Spraying — Featuring the latest autonomy kit with added Lidar sensors to address the dense canopies found in orchards, the initial machine will be offered with a diesel engine. A battery electric tractor of comparable size and capacity to existing diesel 5M/ML models on the market will follow.
Focusing on the 9RX Autonomy Kit, the initial 2022 release was for tillage, the new version will eventually be available to do tillage, planting and grain cart operation. The 16-camera array add-on will be available on a limited basis for 2025 with a full release in 2026. It is important to emphasize, this is a retrofit kit that can be installed on 2017-and-newer tractors.
Deere has upgraded the perception system on the 9 Series tractors to include roof-mounted sensors, providing a 360-degree view of the machine's surroundings that further expand sensor range compared to the first generation. The gen 2 capabilities mean the machine can move 40% faster and move implements twice as wide as before.
The design improves upon previous obstacle avoidance systems that relied on front-mounted cameras, delivering an enhanced perception setup housed within a Vision Processor Unit (VPU) on the cab roof. During the keynote, Deere also highlighted some of the edge cases they encounter trying to get the current generation in commercial form, including the challenge of moths being attracted to the sensor light at night, causing the tractor be brought to a halt until they could figure it out.
These advancements position the 9 Series as the backbone of autonomous operations in large-scale farming, reinforcing John Deere’s commitment to offering a fully autonomous farming system in place by 2030.
Additionally, in 2021 John Deere acquired BearFlag Robotics. Some of the technology from that acquisition is within the new offering.
Business Models
Deere did not talk about the specific business model, but we can extrapolate that it will have a recurring revenue component, similar to See & Spray ($x per acre per pass).
The Fully Autonomous Farm is Still Not Here
Deere Chief Technology Officer Jahmy Hindman highlighted the unique challenges of scaling autonomy to applications like spraying and harvesting, which require machines to perceive through crop vegetation or fully mature crops whereas tillage operates in a relatively straightforward environment. Hindman also noted that these other interventions will need advanced sensor technology to handle these sorts of situations.
What John Deere did not address is the removal of judgement from the cab.
Driving is only one component of what the operator does in the cab.