About - Upstream Ag

What is Upstream Ag Professional?

Upstream Ag Professional is a weekly newsletter providing curated news and evergreen insights and analysis at the intersection of innovation and business in agriculture.

The mission is to apply strategic frameworks to notable, novel and new events and trends throughout the agriculture industry that give you an advantage to take back to your business so you and your team can thrive.

Every Sunday morning, Upstream Ag Professional subscribers receive an email delivering essential research, insights and analysis from the world of agribusiness that they use to drive innovation within their businesses, make informed decisions, and seize emerging opportunities within the industry. Upstream Ag Professional subscribers are leaders within the industry, from executives of the largest agribusinesses, to elite venture capitalists, pioneering agtech founders to the most ambitious young professionals looking for an edge in their career.

Topics include agtech, ag retail, crop protection, seed, biologicals, business strategy, digital technology strategy, farm equipment and more.

What does Upstream Ag Professional Deliver?

Upstream Ag Insights makes subscribers the best-informed professionals in the agriculture industry and enables them to make better decisions for their career, their teams, and their businesses.

The newsletter has more than 12,500 subscribers from over 100 countries and is read by agribusiness leaders from hundreds of agribusinesses including the most influential organizations:

By subscribing you join innovative entrepreneurs, CEO’s from the largest agribusinesses, elite venture capitalists and thought leaders from around the agribusiness industry.

You can check out the website to read the full archives of the more than 275 previously published posts and editions to get a feel for the content.

Rob Saik, CEO AGvisorPRO, Author and Ag Industry Leader

Mike Frank, CEO UPL Corporation

Who Writes Upstream Ag Insights?

My name is Shane Thomas and I am an agribusiness professional based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with a deep passion for learning about the agriculture industry and the business surrounding it. I have experience across agronomy, ag retail, sales, marketing, strategy and precision agriculture that helps me broadly synthesize technology and business impacts on the industry.

Here are four of my favorite articles and editions:

1. Upstream Ag Insights - Week of March 5th 2023

This edition gets into an analysis of Precision Agriculture Adoption Rates on US Farms, API’s in agriculture, importance of content creation in agriculture, along with good marketing through the lens of implicit and explicit needs and finally getting into the importance of technology stacks for competitive differentiation and why great stories win in agriculture.

2. Upstream Ag Insights - Week of February 26th 2023

In one of the most popular editions of Upstream Ag Insights ever, this week broke down Q4 2022 Earnings Results from the most important publicly traded agribusinesses and then broke down the importance of customer experience through the lens of friction redcuction and concepts such as the hedonic treadmill and Schlep Blindness. Next, the edition provides a framework for thinking about private labels and product differentiation in crop protection and finally goes onto break down biological pesticide NPV potential in agriculture.

3. Influence Erosion in Ag Retail

What is driving the dynamics in ag retail? In one of the most popular Upstream Ag Insights posts ever, this article dives into the challenges within ag retail and gets into potential for overcoming them.