Welcome to the 50th Edition of Upstream Ag Professional!
This edition marks one year since launching the Professional version of Upstream. I cannot thank you enough for your support of Upstream Ag Professional— you have made it possible for me to follow my passion for agriculture, business and technology and continue to seek out a deeper understanding of what is happening in the industry; hopefully giving you a jumping off point for meaningful conversations with colleagues, partners and customers for achieving better outcomes in your business and career.
Thanks to your support, Upstream has been able to build out additional features over the last year, including:
Audio
Search
Key Takeaways Section
Improved graphics
Index:
The Insight is the Edge: How Insights Drive Agribusiness Performance
Syngenta and Intrinsyx Bio to offer new biological solution to boost crops’ nutrient use efficiency
Moa Establishes Deal for New Herbicide with Nufarm
Understanding and facilitating farmers adoption of technologies
Are You Doing Great Marketing?
AgTech News …So What? July 2024 with Shane Thomas
‘Electric prototype tractor sparks discussions; ‘6 hours from the battery is a joke!’’
Upstream Member Exclusive LLM Search
The Five Deadliest Strategy Myths
Other Interesting Agriculture Articles (6 this week)
1. The Insight is the Edge: How Insights Drive Agribusiness Performance - Upstream Ag Professional
Key Takeaways
Companies that proactively lead their customers with unique insights gain a competitive edge, unlike those waiting for customer demands, doing what they have always done and competing in low-margin markets.
Acting on unique insights is fundamental to establishing a differentiated business strategy, which is essential for long-term success and avoiding strategic mediocrity.
To achieve breakthrough success, insights must not only be correct but also non-consensus, enabling companies to invest in unproven areas and reap asymmetric rewards.
In January of 2024, I wrote The Insight is the Edge: Why CNH Struggles to Keep Up. This wasn’t intended to be a negative take on CNH, but use them as an example to illustrate that a unique insight and point of view is crucial to establish a vision for a thriving business— following the herd, or waiting for your customer to demand something, often means you are too late or that you are competing in a low margin game.
In the article I stated:
World-class companies lead their customers.
These companies lead their customers based on unique insights.
In most industries, the businesses with the insights have the edge.
In the article I didn’t highlight specifically what an insight is, or where they come from which I wanted to elaborate on, sharing examples from out of agriculture, within agriculture and ways to approach. For the full Upstream Ag Professional article, check out the link above.
2. Syngenta and Intrinsyx Bio to offer new biological solution to boost crops’ nutrient use efficiency - Syngenta
Key Takeaways
Syngenta is collaborating with Intrinsyx Bio. Intrinsyx has proprietary endophyte products that increase plants' access to nitrogen and phosphorous.
This partnership strategically augments Syngenta Biologicals' offerings without overlapping their current portfolio.
The Syngenta-Intrinsyx Bio collaboration highlights the trend of major agricultural companies partnering with specialized biotech firms to integrate advanced biological solutions.
Syngenta Biologicals, a leader in cutting-edge agricultural biological solutions and Intrinsyx Bio, a Silicon Valley biotech company that promotes sustainable agriculture, today announced a collaboration to bring a novel biological solution to agricultural markets globally.
Syngenta continues to build out their biological offering through a partnership with Intrinsyx Bio.
This collaboration gives Syngenta access to Intrinsyx Bio’s endophyte formulations.
An endophyte is a microorganism, typically a bacterium or fungus, that lives within a plant for at least part of its life cycle. Endophytes form a symbiotic relationship with their host plant, providing various benefits to plants, such as:
Enhanced access to nutrients
Increased resistance to pathogens
Improved tolerance to environmental stresses
Specific types of endophytes are more capable of doing one thing vs. another. Intrinsyx and companies like them select for specific capabilities.
