Upstream Ag Professional - September 14th 2025

Welcome to the 110th edition of Upstream Ag Professional

Index 

1. Living in the Field 2.0: Solinftec Releases New Autonomous Robot Concepts

2. Clockspeed and Capital Allocation in Ag: Are food and agriculture giants sleepwalking into irrelevance?

3. Corteva explores splitting seed and crop protection units

4. Stepan Expands Advanced Formulation Services Through Strategic Partnership with SynTech Research Group in North America

5. Monopolistic Inertia, Tech Adoption and Farmer Profitability

6. Rethinking Funding Models

7. EPA Resource Constraints

8. Other Interesting Ag Articles (13 this week)

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

1. Clockspeed and Capital Allocation in Ag: Are food and agriculture giants sleepwalking into irrelevance?

2. Corteva explores splitting seed and crop protection units

Correction from Last Week’s Edition

In last week’s edition I shared Upstream Ag Insights Patent Breakdown: Crop Agnostic Nitrogen Fixing Technology.

There were two errors made.

First, several times throughout the article I cited patent applications as “patents,” suggesting they were granted. The only patent filing shared with a granted patent was from Pivot Bio on Remodeled Microbes.

Second, I stated that Pivot Bio’s patents on genetically modified microbes only cover gram negative microbes. This was a mistake by me. Their patents cover both gram negative and gram positive microbes.

All corrections have been made within the article.

My apologies to Pivot Bio for the misrepresentation, but also to all of you as Upstream Ag Professional members for sharing incorrect information.

1. Living in the Field 2.0: Solinftec Releases New Autonomous Robot Concepts - Upstream Ag Professional

In 2022, Solinftec launched the Solix—a solar-powered autonomous platform that could both scout and spray weeds. A year later, they introduced the Hunter, adding the ability to lure and eradicate insects. Now, they’re pushing the idea of “Living in the Field” even further.

Digital ag has long promised more than it has delivered. Solinftec is attempting to change this by being different: building low-cost, specialized robots designed to work continuously to sense and act in real time, and ultimately shift decision-making and action.

The company’s ambition isn’t just a single robot, but a family of complementary systems— from refilling stations to sensor capabilities that could serve as the farm’s operating system.

Of course, challenges remain: achieving total autonomy at scale, shifting perceptions of what equipment should look like, and finding the right business model. But the direction is worth watching closely.

In the full article available at the link above, I break down:

• Why “living in the field” matters for cost and timeliness of precision agronomy.

• How Solinftec’s approach differs from other autonomy and sensing plays.

• How Solinftec envisions themselves moving forward

• The opportunities and the risks in trying to become the farm’s operating system.

• Images of the new design concepts, including overviews and video’s of the demo systems in action.

2. Clockspeed and Capital Allocation in Ag: Are food and agriculture giants sleepwalking into irrelevance? - Upstream Ag Professional

To answer the question in the above article: No, they aren’t.

I don’t disagree with the sentiment in this article. In fact, there are some great points and recommendations. However, it’s important to highlight that the author is the Managing Partner at AgFunder with ~$300 million AUM across multiple funds, all in the ag and food space, which means he REALLY wants to see some portfolio companies get acquired. In making some of the points there are examples used that I believe are oversimplified in grander context.

(I encourage you to read Rob Leclerc’s article before reading the below.)

In the article by AgFunder’s Rob Leclerc, the major emphasis is that incumbents should invest more in R&D and make more acquisitions, or else they will get left behind.

To make the point he highlights a need for M&A and increases in R&D expenditure.

But I think capital allocation for major agribusinesses is much more nuanced than “do M&A and increase R&D = increased stock price”

I agree that innovation is important, but there are a few points in the article need further contextualization.

For example, Rob Leclerc writes:

The technoptimist in me agrees, but the business side of me looks at this point differently.

Comparing agriculture to tech is not quite the same, specifically because of business/industry economics (eg: margins, cash flow), and particularly because in the context of the large language model/AI race— when there is an innovation or technology that is a consensus bet with a coherent story of how it drives future returns and opportunities, significant investment makes sense (sometimes a lack of investment is penalized even) because investors are bought-in.

The AI race is in some ways like the 90s in biotech and seed — Monsanto was investing nearly 15% of revenue into R&D, they spent ~$8 billion in acquiring seed companies, DuPont acquired Pioneer Hi-Bred and everything else going on with the likes of Agrevo, Ciba-Geigy etc.

The sector, and Wall Street, viewed biotech as the right place to allocate capital. Just like has seemingly been the case for Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and the entire “Mag 7” when it comes to AI.

Monsanto’s stock grew through the mid-1990s as each acquisition added scale in germplasm and distribution. In the book “Lord’s of Harvest” by Daniel Charles it is reinforced how Monsanto was rewarded by Wall Street at that time. On top, there were specific capabilities being worked on, with a large total addressable market and a vision for the future with those capabilities (genetic modification, “NutraSweet-esque” business model etc) that made investment accepted by Wall Street.

In agriculture, I think most of us agree that “innovation” and “technology” are crucial to success for the likes of John Deere, Corteva, Nutrien, etc, but picking the specific technology and companies out there that have adequate traction and the directional arrow for long-term growth while fitting naturally into an incumbents core business is more difficult.

Recent Consensus Bets

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