Welcome to the 43rd Edition of Upstream Ag Professional!
UPL Capital Markets Day Highlights
Q1 2024 Agribusiness Earnings Themes, Highlights and Analysis
Truterra’s Three Year Total: $21 Million to Farmers: How Truterra, Agoro and Indigo Compare
Consolidation in Corporate Agriculture — Who Benefits?
First Greeneye Technology Dealership Opens in Nebraska
Armed with $100m in funding, Dave Friedberg unveils ‘boosted breeding’ tech at Ohalo in ‘holy shit’ moment for crop breeders
AgTech News …So What? May 2024 with Shane Thomas
Cooperative Ventures leads Traction Ag’s $10 million Series A to advance farm accounting technology
Plant Genetics as a Tool for Manipulating Crop Microbiomes: Opportunities and Challenges
Look back in (even more) Anger – a ‘Ruckblick’ four years on
Upstream Ag Professional LLM Search Functionality
1. UPL Capital Markets Day Highlights and Analysis - Upstream Ag Professional
Highlights and commentary on UPL’s Capital Markets Day presentation, overviewing their 2023/24 Fiscal Year.
Notable takeaways include:
UPL Group revenue of $5.2 Billion USD, down 20% from previous year with EBITDA down 51%. UPL expects destocking challenges to alleviate in the second half of 2024.
Revenue declines were largest in North America at 60% and LatAm at 24%.
UPL noted how rebates in North America were hurting the business:
In North America, we continue to face pricing challenges in herbicides such as glufosinate, clethodim, and S-metolachlor, and rebate-related support impacted our revenue in this region by approximately 10%, with a direct impact, of course, on our margins
UPL is emphasizing their differentiated solutions and have a target of 24% of their total sales coming from products launched in the last 5 years by 2027.
UPL CEO Mike Frank also emphasized a focus first on margins, a notable shift for a once generic input provider:
First, focusing on margins over volumes is one of our key priorities.
UPL is working to recalibrate their structure and cost basis leading to some office closures, regional realignment and a net headcount reduction of 11%.
For more on the UPL 2023/24 fiscal year, check out the link above.
1 a. Q1 2024 Agribusiness Earnings Themes, Highlights and Analysis - Upstream Ag Professional
Last week, I dove into over 40 analyst call transcripts and reviewed 30 quarterly earnings reports from leading agriculture companies.
I worked to distil crucial themes, emerging trends, and key insights across crop protection, seeds, fertilizers, retail, equipment manufacturers (irrigation, tractors), and agtech providers.
The write-up includes five trends from Q1 2024, six important quotes, images and takeaways from the transcripts plus highlights and key takeaways from more than 20 agribusinesses.
Related: Nufarm 2024 H1 Results Presentation - Nufarm
For the period Nufarm reported underlying EBITDA of $217 million and statutory NPAT of $49 million. We declared an interim dividend of 4cps. Whilst revenue and margin in our Crop Protection business were impacted by challenging industry wide conditions, we delivered a solid result and achieved a number of important strategic milestones in the half
2. Truterra’s Three Year Total: $21 Million to Farmers - AgWeb
Key Takeaways
Truterra paid out $11.9 million to 431 farmers in 2023, with an average value to each farmer of more than $27,000.
According to press releases and websites, that puts Truterra ahead of companies like Agoro Carbon Alliance and Indigo Ag.
Truterra has announced over three years, since it introduced its carbon program, the company has paid more than $21 million to farmers for the sequestration and reduction of over 1.1 million metric tons of carbon
This is the third time Truterra has released information about their carbon program. If we look at the previous two releases, it helps us learn more about the 2023 year itself, too.
In 2021, the Truterra stats were released as follows:
Truterra's 2021 program sequestered 200,000 tonnes of carbon, resulting in $4 million in payments.
Average payment per participating farmer of $20,000 in 2021.
Via the average payment per farmer and total payments made, we can calculate that they had approximately 200 farmers participate.
The value of carbon to the farmer was $20 per tonne.
In 2022, Truterra’s program expanded to:
In total, the 2022 program paid farmers more than $5.1 million for 262,000 tonnes of carbon.
Truterra carbon program had 273 farmer participants.
Average payment of more than $18,000 per farmer.
The value of carbon to the farmer was $20 per tonne.
This shows the Truterra totals after 2 years were $9.1 million paid to farmers and 462,000 tonnes of carbon.
In 2023, Truterra states that they have now paid $21 million to farmers for the sequestration and reduction of over 1.1 million metric tons of carbon.
If we subtract $9.1 million from $21 million we get about $11.9 million paid to farmers for 2023. And if we get subtract 2021 and 2022 total tonnes from 2023’s total, we get 638,000 metric tonnes of carbon in 2023.
In 2021 and 2022, the $20 per tonne works out almost exact farmer payments.
For 2023, Truterra seemingly is paying farmers slightly less, around $18.70 per tonne according to the math (11.9 million divided by 638,000 tonnes), or there was simply some rounding.
Truterra opted not to share farmer numbers for 2023, however, they stated number enrolled growth of 58% and in 2022 they shared that they had 273 farmers, which means if that grew by 58%, we get a total farmer enrolment number for 2023 of 431.
In 2021 they had an average payment to farmers of $20,000, in 2022 it went down to $18,000. If we divide the $11.9 million paid out over 431 farmers, we get about $27,600 paid out to the average farmer in the program. So, the average number of acres per farmer, and/or the number of practices used is increasing, a good sign for Truterra.
Truterra has never publicly stated their acre number (to my knowledge). But on their website FAQ, they state between 0.2 and 0.75 tonnes per acre of carbon sequestered annually.
Picking their mid range suggestion of 0.5 tonnes per acre and using 638,000 tonnes, we get about 1,275,000 acres enrolled for 2023.
How do the Truterra numbers compare to three other prominent USA based programs in Indigo, Arva Intelligence and Agoro Carbon Alliance?
For the full calculation of Indigo Ag’s 2023 numbers, check out the March 3rd 2024 edition of Upstream Ag.
3. Consolidation in Corporate Agriculture — Who Benefits? - The Business of Agriculture Podcast
Key Takeaways
The benefit of consolidation in the crop protection and seed industry sometimes is often justified by the assumption that it leads to increased investment in innovation, resulting in higher yields and better products for farmers. This view is overly simplistic. True benefits of consolidation should also consider factors like product price, selection, and service, which directly impact market dynamics and farmer profitability.
As consolidation progresses, a smaller number of large suppliers gain more control over retails and distributors. This increased supplier power can lead to fewer options for distributors and retailers, potentially resulting in higher prices and fewer choices for farmers. The ongoing FTC lawsuit against Syngenta and Corteva, alleging anti-competitive practices, highlights concerns about how consolidation might restrict market access for generics and drive up costs for end-users.
This is an interesting question to ask surrounding consolidation of crop protection and seed companies (specific to the question in this podcast, consolidation in agriculture goes far beyond just them, though), and one I won’t be able to deliver an objectively agreed upon answer to. But it’s worth exploring how to think about this question with some critical thinking.
I’ll be the first to admit, I have built up biases in this area as an industry professional and I think about this quote from Upton Sinclair in regards to those biases:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Even though I am independent today, the Upstream subscriber base is disproportionately crop input companies (that have consolidated) and I spent the majority of my career working directly with or for these companies.
In listening to the podcast, I think the guest, an employee of Corteva, has those same biases I have.
I try to acknowledge and overcome my biases each week in Upstream by seeking alternative perspectives and data points and this week I’ll take an alternative view on this subject, too.
In the podcast there isn’t really a discussion nor tangible data brought forth to uncover if anyone truly benefits from consolidation outside the companies solidifying their position in the market— there is only an assumption that consolidation has outright been good for farmers, over-indexing on investment in innovation leading to yield increases as the objective truth of the benefits.
I think this is an over simplification and too narrow of a view of what a “beneficial” outcome of consolidation is.
The question is very nuanced and complex, with a need a for regression analysis to assess farmer profitability while holding things like weather, and commodity markets constant over time, along with factoring in the long R&D cycles, the fact R&D spend is an input, not an output and that innovation would happen independent of consolidation, as just a few things.
But we can think through some qualitative market implications.
The first thing is defining what “benefit” means and then determining where these benefits, or challenges, start.
The United States Federal Trade Commission states that competition is:
about price, selection, and service. It benefits consumers by keeping prices low and the quality and choice of goods and services high.
I summarize this as optionality and it’s an important component that lays the foundation for how to think about the question of who benefits.
In the podcast, the emphasis is only on innovation.
American Economist Carl Shapiro suggests that, in order to understand the relationship between innovation and competition in a specific market, one should focus on the incentive and ability of firms to engage in innovation. Arguably, there is enough incentive and ability for continued innovation in the consolidated crop input companies (for simplicity, we will ignore the reality that most companies struggle with true innovation and new AIs in ag).
If we leave it at ability to invest in innovation, as suggested on the podcast, then we can probably conclude innovation has been a net neutral outcome for farmers at worst.
But if we go back to price, selection and service it signals a key question to ask that gives other insight into implications:
How has consolidation impacted distributors and retailers?
This is an important question to ask when figuring out if consolidation has benefited, or hindered, farmers in North America because of their influence. It doesn’t get asked until 47+ minutes into the podcast and there is little critical consideration put into answering it (I do not fault the guest for this, him answering the question any other way is a no-win outcome for him given his employer).
The price and selection a farmer has is an output of what products a retail stocks— generics, branded, private label etc.
In the podcast, it is suggested that crop input company consolidation has been good for retailers.
Unless assessing this question focuses on how many meetings a retailer or distributor needs to have with its supplier companies, I think this is off.
To illustrate, we can look at Porter’s Five Forces framework to inform us. One of Porter’s forces is called “Supplier Power.”
If suppliers are more dominant then they have the power to influence price, programs as well as the availability of resources and even which products companies stock (more on this later).
Suppliers are most powerful when companies are dependent on them.
For context, Wal-Mart has more than 100,000 suppliers across the globe. Nutrien is the largest ag retailer and sold around $9 billion of seed and crop protection in 2023 and if I were to guess, 80%+ of that revenue likely came from <12 companies with a distinct concentration in four major players.
As consolidation in the crop protection space has continued over the last several decades alternative suppliers has decreased and four suppliers have gained portfolio’s that can be used across the entire acre— from seed to seed treatment, to herbicide, to fungicide and insecticide, enabling them to influence retails more directly through programs.
We can infer this leads directly to retailers having less optionality in their business than they have historically when it comes to building their farmer offering.
If retails have less optionality, that leads to less optionality for the farmer leading to potentially higher prices for similar outcomes (eg: 95% control of specific weeds or insects with a generic vs. a branded product).
I can’t bring direct data on this either, nor am I capable of drawing a conclusion due to that, but we can look to current the FTC lawsuit of Syngenta and Corteva, which are ongoing, to consider whether there has been harm, or not, based on precisely this: Retailers being hand-cuffed by their suppliers programs with massive incentives to eliminate options within their portfolio (allegedly).
The FTC sued Syngenta and Corteva in 2022, alleging that these companies have extended their monopolies on certain pesticides beyond their patent terms through “loyalty programs” and “exclusion payments.” The FTC alleges that Syngenta and Corteva incentivized distributors to limit their sales of generic products, with the limit ranging from 0 to 15% of branded product sales.
The complaint alleges that Syngenta and Corteva's actions have led to higher prices for farmers and restricted market access for generic pesticide manufacturers.
These companies allegedly used loyalty programs to pay distributors to limit business with generic manufacturers and to punish those who didn't comply. This apparently involved setting loyalty thresholds and offering significant financial incentives. These loyalty programs are alleged to have kept generic pesticides out of the market, maintained the monopoly positions of Syngenta and Corteva, and resulted in higher prices for farmers.
The complaint argues that such exclusive dealing violates multiple laws, including the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act, and the FTC Act. It suggests that these actions likely foreclosed competition in major parts of the market and that due to poor arguments from Syngenta and Corteva, the court denies their motion to dismiss to suit.
Corteva and Syngenta’s motion to get the case dismissed was denied on January 12th 2024, meaning the case moves to the “evidence-gathering stage.”
If Syngenta and Corteva are found guilty of the aforementioned accusations, that would send at least some signal that consolidation has had a detrimental to farmers and those in the value chain.
There is an argument that these programs were occurring throughout earlier aspects of consolidation, however, if you are a retailer reliant on one segment (eg: fungicides) of one of these consolidated companies, they can have disproportionate influence on your herbicide portfolio because that threat of a lack of access to the fungicide, or being uncompetitive in the market on pricing because of inability to access program dollars, looms over the distributor or retailer, which eventually challenges the farmer.
The lawsuit has not been settled, but if there is to be any conversation surrounding who benefits from seed and crop protection consolidation, I think there is a need to consider the implications more holistically beyond just “innovation.”
Related: The Implications of FTC Suing Corteva and Syngenta - Upstream Ag Professional
Exploring Incumbent Innovation in Agriculture - Upstream Ag Professional
Another topic on the podcast gets into the realm of biostimulant products, an area I am passionate about.
In it they talk about various biostimulant considerations like proving the legitimacy of products along with challenges that biostimulants can alleviate such as “summer decline.”
Legitimacy is a good way to talk about it that is aligned with the need to effectively set expectations in biostimulants, something that has not been done well (on average) by biostimulant companies.
Summer decline, a concept talked about in the podcast, is an interesting issue to associate with biostimulants.
One of the things I talk about in biostimulants is the need to evangelize a specific problem.
Often, with biostimulants we bring it back to more yield and broad “plant health” claims. More yield is not a problem. It’s an outcome of managing an agronomic problem. Problems create urgency and urgency drives action.
Evangelizing a specific problem primes the farmer or agronomist to look for something specific and delivers tools and data to make the problem tangible. This exact approach is done with specific weeds for driving demand for a new herbicide, or specific diseases for generating demand for fungicides.
Evangelizing an agronomic problem, more specifically, a precise abiotic stress, has three components:
Make it tangible — What does the stress look? How do you assess it?
Quantify it — How frequently it occurs? What is the average yield reduction? What crops does it occur in most frequently?
Make it top of mind — Deliver the messaging, and the tools, into the market consistently through sell sheets, trial efforts etc.
If we look at most biostimulant websites (eg: I highlighted this with DPH Biologicals last year), there is not an effort to do any of this— yet if an individual marketing herbicides was to lack a “hero” weed and sales people weren’t equipped with the ability to talk about that weed, that person would lose their job and surely the company would struggle to find success.
The angle for evangelization can be found in what I call the Funnel of Specificity, applied to abiotic stresses:
For more examples, check out The Sauce Paradox.
I’ve worked with multiple organizations on this problem in my consulting business and the results have continually been significant for the products and segments worked on. The benefit is not just the messaging, it is how it focuses in the resources and efforts— it aligns trialing efforts into a specific crop, a specific geography and for a specific focus, it dials in conversations and talking points, and it plants a flag for a specific product while everyone else emphasizes their generalist product.
4. First Greeneye Technology Dealership Opens in Nebraska -Greeneye
Key Takeaways
Greeneye is partnering with Nebraska-based Boeck Seed Services to provide sales, installation and service to farmers in the Midwest
The dealership is the first in a planned nationwide network to support Greeneye’s expansion across the U.S.
Greeneye Technology, has announced the opening of its first dedicated dealership. The company is partnering with Nebraska-based Boeck Seed Services to provide sales, installation and service to farmers in Nebraska and adjoining states, in the first of a planned nationwide network of dealerships to support the company’s ambitious expansion plans in the U.S.
This is good news for Greeneye.
In the April 21st 2024 Edition of Upstream Ag Professional I made the following statement:
One of the biggest hurdles I see for Greeneye is distribution.
I mentioned this because of the challenges that I thought were likely to rise with having ag retailers and FBN as the primary go-to-market for Greeneye based on a statement CEO Nadav Bocher made in a 2023 interview with The Daily Scoop:
Greeneye says its market is to farmers and ag retailers. The first systems will be sold via the FBN partnership will be for 2024 application season. And Nadav Bocher, Co-founder and CEO of Greeneye Technology, says he plans on FBN being the primary go-to-market channel for machines in just a few years.
When that announcement came out I was surprised— though I respect trying new things.
In my view, FBN was an inferior route to market for a machinery retrofit company and retailers uptake was unlikely to be rapid.
I went on to say in April surrounding the Greeneye $20 million raise:
Given the emphasis of these funds to “scale US operations”— there will be significant efforts put forth on the distribution end to gain access to large dealerships.
Market access through an equipment dealership is the optimal route. (Though, I said “large” and I am not certain that’s correct).
Greeneye now has dealership distribution.
Albeit, according to their website Boeck Seed Services is not a traditional “equipment dealership”— they sell inputs (seed, crop protection) and planters along with upgrade and repair support.
They do not sell access to a full fleet of equipment.
Fundamentally what Greeneye needs is:
a market access point with sales staff (that ideally has credit access).
the ability to in-still confidence in farm customers that they will have local support.
a central place to install the Greeneye system on a sprayer.
Boeck Seed Services does all three, and more.
They also support FBN products and services. And FBN still has a program with Greeneye, according to the FBN website:
FBN and Greeneye have partnered to provide farmers with comprehensive installation, machine service, and agronomic product support throughout the growing season. FBN will provide competitive financing to qualifying applicants for both the Greeneye system as well as the FBN Precision Spraying AcrePlan.
In fact, this is distribution through FBN— which indicates I misjudged the lack of opportunity, presuming that most FBN dealers would not have an equipment support capability. It’s not clear to me how many dealers like this are out there for Greeneye to access, but it is notable and will be interesting to see the other dealers that Greeneye announces in coming months.
5. Armed with $100m in funding, Dave Friedberg unveils ‘boosted breeding’ tech at Ohalo in ‘holy shit’ moment for crop breeders - AgFunder News
I briefly highlighted this news last week based on what Ohalo CEO Dave Friedberg shared on The All-In Podcast.
This week I was able to connect with Dave, where he shared some additional insights that I wanted to highlight.
Vegetative Propagation
‘We’re unlocking the seed industry for crops that are vegetatively propagated’
One of the crops that Ohalo has stated as starting a starting point are potatoes, which is a vegetatively propagated crop.
Vegetative propagation is a form of asexual reproduction in plants where new plants grow from fragments or specialized structures of the parent plant. This method uses plant parts such as stems, roots, or leaves to produce genetically identical offspring.
Berries, such as strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, fall into this category which Ohalo notably has numerous Driscoll’s employees and has alluded to on the All-in Podcast as a potential focus. Examples also include banana, a crop at major risk to a fusarium related disease, along with sugarcane, cassava, ginger and many others.
Ohalo has not disclosed any targets outside potatoes and passing comments about the potential in berries. Given the emphasis of vegetative propagation, we can assume some other potential crops.
The Potato Market
Ohalo has openly stated they are going after the potato market.
I had an ill-informed view of the potato market. I thought the market was 90%+ owned by the likes of integrated processes like Lamb Weston, Simplot and McCain. What I failed to consider that Dave informed me of was the table potato market, which makes up something like 40% of the North American potato market and is not controlled by the aforementioned vertically integrated organizations. This leaves a bigger opportunity for Ohalo than I anticipated— not to mention, that the majority of potatoes are grown outside North America where less than 5% are grown on a contract basis. This market structure lends itself well to Ohalo building their own seed company, starting in the fragmented portion of the market to drive change.
Investors
Ohalo has raised “a little over $100 million” from undisclosed investors.
Ohalo was started as part of The Production Board (TPB), where David Friedberg is also CEO, as a foundry based company. It was said to me that today, Ohalo is still majority owned by TPB.
The science behind this technology remains compelling, though, I have been looking to talk to plant breeders to learn more on the limitations and opportunities.
6. AgTech News …So What? May 2024 with Shane Thomas - AgTech So What
Last week I joined Sarah Nolet on the the AgTech So What Podcast to discuss topics like:
How governments are (and aren’t) stepping into the agtech ecosystem
What risk is posed by technology that’s made in a foreign (and potentially adversarial) country– like drones from China in the US
Whether or not there is an AgTech Funding Drought in 2024, and what risks and opportunities might result
996 work culture
Related: The Value of Imagining a Tomorrow that Probably Won’t Come - Sarah Nolet
One of the tools we use to think about how the future might look - and therefore where to invest - is called horizon scanning. We turn data, trends, and anecdotes we see, hear, and read about into provocative-yet-possible future scenarios, and then ask ourselves: “what might we need to do to not only prepare for this future, but also to identify previously hidden opportunities?”
6. Plant Genetics as a Tool for Manipulating Crop Microbiomes: Opportunities and Challenges - NCBI
Key Takeaways
Genetic manipulation of plants to better attract beneficial soil microbes presents a novel avenue for improving crop yield and nutrient use efficiency. The approach aims to optimize plant-microbe interactions, leading to enhanced crop outcomes by attracting specific beneficial bacteria.
The approach is not yet viable as significant research is needed to understand plant physiology and microbiome interactions to develop actionable genetic improvement strategies with predictable outcomes for enhancing microbiome functions.
Here we propose genetic manipulation of the host plant as another avenue through which microbiomes could be manipulated. We discuss how domestication and modern breeding have shaped crop microbiomes, as well as the potential for improving plant-microbiome interactions through conventional breeding or genetic engineering.
The industry talks a lot about microbes for improving farm yield. Many are skeptical that a relatively small number of colony forming units (CFUs) being applied in a hostile environment like the soil can provide a consistent ROI across broad regions.
The alternative to increase microbial activity around plant roots today is applying a non-living biostimulant to the plant directly, generating a physiological response that increases secretion of various exudates, such as organic or amino acids, which attract soil based beneficial microbes. Sound Agriculture’s product has this type of action, for example.
Another alternative presented in the linked paper is genetically altering the plant to attract specific types of in-soil microbes.
For example:
There might be a bacteria that increases corn’s use of nitrogen in soil. The idea would be to genetically alter the corn plant so that it would disproportionately attract those organisms to the plant, theoretically increasing nitrogen use efficiency.
Particularly if the corn plant could produce a molecule that specifically optimizes that organism— giving it a step up over other competing organisms in the soil.
This approach is not viable today as stated directly in the conclusion of the paper:
Such methods are likely a long way in the future…A great deal of research is needed to provide the scientific foundation that would enable actionable genetic improvement strategies with predictable outcomes for microbiome function.
There are many challenges in understanding the microbiome itself, along with the plant physiology. However, the concept itself is interesting and the paper, presents some useful background for thinking through limitations of microbes in agriculture and opportunities, such as through the use of consortia.
7. Cooperative Ventures leads Traction Ag’s $10 million Series A to advance farm accounting technology - Feedstuffs
Cooperative Ventures has announced an investment in Traction Ag, Inc., a leader in farm accounting technology and developer of the first cloud-based accounting software delivering solutions to farmers across the United States. A joint venture between two leading farmer-owned cooperatives, CHS and GROWMARK, Cooperative Ventures focuses on developing mutually beneficial commercial relationships between startups and cooperative partners. Traction Ag’s $10 million Series A round was led by Cooperative Ventures and joined by Plymouth Growth and existing investors.
Cooperative Ventures is a JV between CHS and GROWMARK, which means their VC portfolio companies theoretically have access to a network of agronomists and sales people, but also farmers:
Through this relationship, Traction can create valuable connections within the vast network of CHS and GROWMARK farmer-owners and customers.
Traction has acquired assets from TELUS Agriculture (Conservis) and Corteva (some Granular capabilities) to augment their accounting software.
8. Look back in (even more) Anger – a ‘Ruckblick’ four years on - Shubhang Shankar Linkedin
Key Takeaways
Many segments of AgTech lack the 10x better experience necessary for “disruption.”
Only a few areas, such as precision spraying technologies, Fintech, and robotics, are delivering substantial value propositions that align with market needs.
Lack of truly disruptive innovation: in my original article I had gone down to the original work of Clayton Christensen to determine that most of the innovation that is being showcased in AgTech is not truly disruptive as it seeks to serve the ‘high’ end rather than creating new markets. This is probably the contention that brought the most amount of pushback 4 years ago but I think this view is so widespread today that it is once again axiomatic. At the time, I was worried that without a 10X vs 10% value proposition to customers / growers, most startups would struggle to scale. The only segments that seem to be delivering on that vision seem to be Precision / Smart spraying technologies, Fintech and Robotics. The pivot of many data analytics / vision based scouting startups into Precision Spraying or Carbon credit MRV can thus be taken to be validation of this view.
If you haven’t read Shubhang’s 2020 article Look Back in Anger Or Disruption that Incumbents can love – AgTech in the 2010s, I would encourage you to do so. It is incredibly insightful, even 4 years later.
Say it out softly – there is no disruption in AgTech. Ambitions have mellowed. Valuations will follow.
He has written a good follow-up that is a good read as well. In it, I think he was too harsh on himself in what he got “wrong”, and he was primarily very accurate.
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Non Ag Article
The Computational Biology Revolution - Contrary
In early 2024, substantial inroads were made toward this goal with the release of Evo, a model developed by the Arc Institute, Stanford, and TogetherAI. Evo is the first publicly available model that can make inferences over an entire genome. The model was trained on a data set of 2.7 million prokaryotic and phage genomes and is capable of generating DNA sequences at single-nucleotide precision.
In a blog post announcing the release of Evo, researchers at Stanford’s Hazy Research Lab wrote, “As we were training Evo … it felt like we were observing a “GPT” moment in biology. A simple unsupervised task was getting competitive zero-shot performance by modeling across the central dogma of biology, and generalizing across DNA, RNA and protein modalities.”
Evo is just the first in what will likely be a series of models able to make inferences and predictions over a much larger biological context window. These models represent a promising new chapter in biology and medicine, where new genetic editing tools, along with answers to some of our most difficult questions, will be answered not through painstaking observation, but through generative AI.
Other Ag Articles
Necessary Evolution of Concepts and Technologies - Britaldo Hernandez Solinftec CEO
Promising Bioherbicide Pipeline In The Works - AgWeb
The Unintended Consequences of Herbicides with Frank Dean - Advancing Eco Agriculture
Remote Sensing in Agriculture Report - EOS Data Analytics
When the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal - Prime Future
Upstream Ag Professional - May 26th 2024