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Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech — the data ownership question and why farm data is becoming a power issue as AI gets embedded in agricultural decisions, Pieter Lommen of Delphy on why CEA projects fail before they buy their first climate computer, Bayer cutting full-year crop science guidance, Bowery Farming's IP auction concluding across three buyers, Loam Bio's first commercial soil carbon credit sale, and Land O'Lakes expanding its Microsoft AI precision farming collaboration to 100 million acres. Let's get started!

Here’s a Quick Snapshot of What’s Making Headlines:

1. Analysis: The Data Ownership Question: who owns the data generated on a farm, why current contracts largely favour platforms over farmers, and why the answer is about to matter much more as AI gets embedded in agricultural decision-making
2. Interview: Pieter Lommen of Delphy on practical CEA consulting — translating Dutch greenhouse science into commercially viable operations globally, crop-specific knowledge transfer, and why implementation matters more than technology
3. Earnings: Bayer cuts FY crop science guidance citing US herbicide pricing pressure and glyphosate market dynamics; FMC reports better-than-expected Q2 on Latin America volume; Yara Q2 EBITDA up 14% on ammonia margins; Syngenta Group H1 revenues broadly stable
4. M&A: BioAtlantis acquired by a strategic buyer — Irish seaweed bioactives company exits after 20-plus years; Bowery Farming IP auction concludes with hydroponic patents going to three separate buyers
5. Launch: Protelum launches commercially — plant-based protein ingredient from lupin and faba bean targeting food reformulation; Loam Bio completes first commercial soil carbon credit sale under its CSIRO-validated methodology
6. Partnerships: Syngenta and Indigo Ag's Terion sign a multi-year agronomic data sharing agreement; Land O'Lakes and Microsoft expand their AI precision farming collaboration to cover 100 million acres
7. Funding: Naio Technologies raises 30M euros for vegetable crop weeding robotics; Persephone Biome raises $12M Series A for microbiome-based crop health; Tarfin raises $20M to expand agricultural credit access in Turkey
8. Events: Commercial UAV Expo (Las Vegas), Taiwan Smart Agriweek, Women in Agribusiness Global Summit (New Orleans), Global Agrovet Research Conference (Dubai), EIMA International (Bologna)

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2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

2025 Precision Ag Report

2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

2025 Precision Ag Report

Quick recap from last week — we looked at how steel, aluminum, and semiconductor tariffs are adding 8 to 23% to the landed cost of AgTech hardware, and why the companies that localized manufacturing early are absorbing it better than those that didn't. Earnings came in split: Corteva and Nutrien moved up while AGCO dropped 18% on dealer destocking. Three companies exited — AppHarvest through a court sale, Benson Hill through a formal wind-down, and Invaio Sciences closing despite genuine scientific momentum. Semios acquired Pessl Instruments to own its sensor hardware layer. And Rothamsted Research published 180 years of soil carbon data showing UK arable fields losing carbon at 0.17% per year despite organic matter additions — a finding with real implications for how we account for agricultural carbon offsets. Now this week.

Welcome to another episode of AgTech Digest, your go-to source for the latest in agricultural technology. This week we're getting into the data ownership question — who actually owns the information generated on a farm when it runs through a digital platform, and why that question is going to get much harder to ignore as AI systems take on more of the decision-making. We'll also speak with someone who has spent years translating Dutch greenhouse science into commercially viable operations around the world. And on the news side — Bayer has cut its full-year guidance, the Bowery Farming IP has been auctioned off, Loam Bio has completed its first commercial soil carbon credit sale, and Land O'Lakes and Microsoft are expanding a precision farming collaboration to cover 100 million acres. There's a lot to cover, so let's get started.

Let's take a look at what this week brings us. The data question has been sitting under the surface of every precision agriculture conversation for years. This week it comes to the front. Alongside that, earnings season delivers another mixed bag — Bayer cutting guidance while FMC and Yara hold firm — and the Bowery Farming IP auction puts a number on what happens when a well-funded vertical farm ends. The field notes this week are detailed, and the patterns they reveal are worth paying attention to.

Looking at this week's analysis, it covers the data ownership question in agriculture. Every connected sensor, yield monitor, soil probe, and drone flight generates data. That data is increasingly the most valuable asset a farm produces — not the grain, not the livestock, not the land. And right now, the contracts governing who owns that data almost universally favour the platform over the farmer. Most precision agriculture service agreements include clauses that allow providers to aggregate, anonymize, and use farm data to improve their own models. Some explicitly grant rights to sell insights derived from that data to third parties including input suppliers, insurers, and commodity traders. Farmers who signed up for these platforms often did so without understanding the full scope of those rights. The reason this is becoming urgent now is AI. When an AI system is trained on millions of farm records to generate agronomic recommendations, the farm that contributed those records gets an app. The company that trained the model on those records gets a defensible competitive moat. The analysis looks at three scenarios: what happens if farmers begin to assert data rights, what happens if regulators step in — as the EU is already doing through its Data Act — and what a farmer-first data architecture would actually look like in practice. The short answer is that whoever controls the training data controls the AI, and whoever controls the AI is going to have enormous influence over agricultural decision-making for the next 20 years. That's not a technology question. It's a power question.

Additionally, this week's interview features Pieter Lommen, Senior Consultant at Delphy, who is featured on what practical CEA consulting actually looks like at an operational level. Delphy is a Dutch knowledge company with roots in Wageningen's agricultural science tradition, and Lommen works with greenhouse operators and investors globally — translating the principles behind Dutch high-tech horticulture into commercially viable systems in very different climates, markets, and regulatory environments. His central argument is that the technology is rarely the limiting factor in a CEA project. The limiting factors are almost always crop-specific knowledge, local market realities, and implementation capacity. A climate computer from the Netherlands will work in Saudi Arabia. Whether it generates a profitable tomato crop depends on whether the operator understands what that tomato needs at every growth stage, and whether the business model is structured around the actual cost of production in that location. Lommen is also candid about where CEA projects fail: over-capitalisation in the build phase, underestimation of operating costs, and a tendency to benchmark against showcase Dutch facilities rather than commercial operations. His view on the current consolidation cycle is that it is healthy — removing operators who were either underfinanced or overbuilt, and creating space for more disciplined entrants who understand that a greenhouse is a factory, and factories need to operate close to capacity to be economically viable.

What's in the news for us? Well, Bayer cut its full-year crop science guidance, citing US herbicide market pricing pressure and accelerating generic glyphosate competition following the Ruveon LLC restructuring. The guidance reduction signals that the structural shift in US glyphosate economics is moving faster than Bayer's internal forecasts anticipated. FMC, by contrast, reported better-than-expected Q2 results on stronger Latin American crop protection volumes, reaffirming its full-year outlook. Yara posted Q2 EBITDA up 14% year-on-year on improved ammonia margins and higher production rates, benefiting from the global ammonia price recovery. And Syngenta Group reported H1 revenues broadly stable year-on-year, with seed growth offsetting continued crop protection softness in Europe. On the M&A side, BioAtlantis — the Irish seaweed bioactives company — was acquired by a strategic buyer after more than 20 years of operation. BioAtlantis developed a range of seaweed-derived biostimulants and animal nutrition products and had been exploring exit options for several years. The deal is not a distress sale — it represents a mature exit for a founder-led business that built real commercial traction.

The Bowery Farming IP auction has concluded, with the company's hydroponic patents distributed across three separate buyers. The outcome is interesting: rather than one acquirer consolidating Bowery's intellectual property, the patents have been carved up, suggesting that different buyers saw value in different specific claims rather than in the portfolio as a whole. The auction result also puts an implicit market value on what Bowery built — not zero, but significantly below the $2.3 billion it raised. In new launches, Protelum launched commercially with its plant-based protein ingredients derived from lupin and faba bean, targeting food manufacturers looking to reformulate with EU-grown, non-GMO protein sources. The company has been in development for several years and has secured commercial contracts in the bakery and dairy-alternative sectors. Loam Bio completed its first commercial soil carbon credit sale under its CSIRO-validated mycorrhizal fungi methodology — the transaction involves Australian grain farmers and represents the first market validation of Loam's core scientific approach at commercial scale. In partnerships, Syngenta and Terion — the Flagship Pioneering company that merged CIBO Technologies with Indigo Ag's Source business — signed a multi-year agronomic data sharing agreement, giving Terion's data infrastructure access to Syngenta's field trial and crop performance data while giving Syngenta access to Terion's farm-level analytics. This is exactly the kind of deal the data ownership analysis warns about. Land O'Lakes and Microsoft expanded their existing AI precision farming collaboration to cover 100 million acres, deploying Azure AI models across WinField United's advisory network to generate field-level recommendations at scale.

In funding, Naio Technologies raised 30 million euros for the next phase of its vegetable crop weeding robotics deployment — the French company's Dino and Oz robots are already commercially deployed across Europe and North America, and the round funds international expansion and new crop applications. Persephone Biome raised $12 million in a Series A to advance its microbiome-based crop health platform, targeting fungal disease suppression and root health in high-value crops. And Tarfin raised $20 million to expand agricultural credit access in Turkey, connecting smallholder farmers with input suppliers through a fintech layer that uses crop data to assess creditworthiness. Also this week: Corteva's Vylor spinoff pre-registration filing was submitted to the SEC ahead of its planned Q4 2026 separation. The filing reveals that Vylor will carry approximately $2 billion in net debt at separation, and will operate with royalty agreements back to Corteva for technology licensed from the parent. Wilbur-Ellis launched a new regenerative agriculture incentive program covering 500,000 acres in the US Pacific Northwest. And BASF's Agricultural Solutions division announced a cost reduction program targeting $200 million in annual savings by 2028, primarily through headcount reductions in research and administration. Finally to close our news, on appointments: Yara named Svein Tore Holsether as Chairman of the Board, stepping down from his CEO role after 10 years. Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand was named as incoming CEO effective September 1st. Nutrien appointed Karen Grasby as EVP and CFO. And Pivot Bio named Kareem Adisa as Chief Commercial Officer as the company scales PROVEN 40 commercialisation.

Looking ahead to upcoming industry events, mark your calendars for Commercial UAV Expo from September 1st to 3rd, 2026 in Las Vegas. Following that, Taiwan Smart Agriweek runs from September 8th to 10th in Taiwan, and the Women in Agribusiness Global Summit takes place from September 22nd to 24th in New Orleans. Then we have the Global Agrovet Research Conference from October 7th to 8th in Dubai. Finally, don't miss EIMA International in November in Bologna.

That wraps up today's episode of AgTech Digest. We explored the latest developments in agricultural technology. From a data ownership analysis that reframes farm data as a power question, not just a technology one, and Pieter Lommen's grounded take on why CEA projects fail before they ever buy a climate computer, to Bayer cutting guidance on glyphosate economics, the Bowery IP being carved up at auction, Loam Bio completing its first commercial carbon credit sale, and Land O'Lakes and Microsoft covering 100 million acres with AI agronomic recommendations — it's clear that the agtech sector is making strides in sustainability and innovation. The field notes from this week are complex, and the decisions being made right now about data, infrastructure, and market access are going to shape the industry for a long time. Thanks for joining me, I'm Anna, signing off. Stay inspired and keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible!