Rethinking Crop Nutrition: Technologies Reshaping Agricultural Inputs

Urbi Pathak: Good morning, good afternoon, and welcome to the webinar, Rethinking Crop Nutrition: The Technologies That Are Reshaping Agricultural Inputs. My name is Urbi Pathak, analyst here at Lux Research, and I will be moderating today’s session. Presenting today is my colleague Deepesh Bista, who is an analyst here at Lux Research. Throughout the webinar, you can type your questions in the questions box on your screen. And time permitting, we will answer all the questions that we can. If your question does not get answered, please do not hesitate to e-mail it to [email protected], and we will respond. If at any point you experience technical difficulties such as a frozen screen, simply refresh your browser and check that your internet connection is strong. Before we start the webinar, a word about what and who we are. Lux Research helps organizations make more confident, innovative decisions about what matters next. As an independent research and advisory firm, we work with many of the world’s leading companies to identify emerging opportunities, evaluate technologies, and make high-impact innovation decisions. Our scientists, engineers, analysts, and industry experts combine original research and methodologies with a practical decision framework to help organizations separate signal from noise. Every day, we help clients answer three critical questions. Where should we focus innovation efforts? Which technologies deserve investment? And which partners can accelerate innovation? Today’s webinar is an opportunity to share some of our thinking with you on the topic of alternative crop nutrition. So with that, now let’s jump into the discussion. So over to you, Deepesh.

Deepesh Bista: Thanks, Urbi, and thanks, everyone, for joining. Today I’ll be talking about rethinking crop nutrition and the technologies that are reshaping agricultural inputs. So crop nutrition has traditionally been dominated by conventional fertilizers and established nutrient management practices. But the landscape in the last decade or so has become much broader. So what I want to focus on today is not simply what is new, but the more useful question is which technologies can strengthen nutrient resilience and where should companies engage now versus prepare for longer-term opportunities? And I want to emphasize two words in the title, rethinking and reshaping. So why do we need to rethink crop nutrition? Because the challenge today is increasingly not whether conventional fertilizer works. It is whether companies can reliably access and move nutrients to the region where they are needed the most. And reshaping is about whether alternative technologies can take some of the pressure off the conventional supply model. That distinction between innovation and durable, deployable innovation is the thread I’ll be using throughout the webinar. Let’s start with the business question behind rethinking crop nutrition. The reason to rethink crop nutrition is not because conventional fertilizers have stopped working. The issue is that fertilizer costs and availability can become less predictable, and that creates a portfolio challenge for many of the crop input companies. If the nutrient supply becomes more exposed to energy prices, trade disruptions, regional availability, geopolitical situations, what can you offer your customers that gives them another way to manage that risk? So when I talk about nutrient resilience, I mean reducing that exposure while maintaining the nutrients crops need when the conventional supply becomes difficult, expensive, or less predictable. And most importantly, this is not about replacing conventional fertilizer entirely. So the more realistic question is how much of the exposure can your technology absorb and in which regions does that actually matter? And as we know, supply disruption is not uniform. A technology may have a significant value in one market and very little value in another where fertilizer is already very cheap and easily available. So we don’t even have to go that far to give an example of disruption. As soon as the Iran war started, the fertilizer market reacted very sharply. And if you all know, back in February when the war began, urea prices were around $466 per ton. Then by the middle of April, it was like $701 per ton, which is about a 51% increase in the price due to the disruption of the trade routes. So there’s another question we need to keep in mind throughout the webinar. If these fertilizer markets stabilize again, does that mean that these alternative technologies still have enough economic value to remain in the portfolio? This is very important because we’re not looking for technologies that make sense during a short-term crisis. We’re looking more for technologies that can become a very durable business. So now let’s look into how we are going to answer these questions that I just mentioned. And I’ll do this in three steps. First, I will look into where investment and innovation are moving across alternative crop nutrition. And essentially that’s what’s been happening in this space and where the development activity is concentrating. And then I’ll use a common assessment framework to look at the near-term and long-term opportunities for two different technologies and understand why they may or may not succeed as they mature. And lastly, I will bring those together in an outlook on what companies should do now and what should remain a long-term option. So let’s look at the new innovation in alternative crop nutrition. I mean, the innovation momentum is evolving and there’s lots of opportunities that we are seeing in the alternative crop nutrition space. And I’ll use two signals here. One is funding; the other is patents to understand where the development is concentrating and how that relates to nutrient resilience challenge we just discussed. But before going into the momentum, I just wanted to briefly talk about an overview of alternative crop nutrition innovation. So at Lux, we’ve divided alternative crop nutrition into five categories. And biofertilizer basically uses microbes to make nutrients available to plants, for example, through nitrogen fixation or phosphate solubilization, whereas microbial biostimulants use beneficial microbes to improve things like root development, nutrient uptake, and stress tolerance. And biochemical biostimulants use non-microbial compounds, such as your humic substances, amino acids, or seaweed-extract-derived materials. On the other hand, soil conditioners primarily improve soil properties such as soil structure, water retention, or organic matter in the soil. On-site fertilizer production, on the other hand, changes the supply model by producing nitrogen fertilizer very close to where it is needed. And I could spend an entire webinar on each category, but today I’m going to focus on two, biofertilizers and on-site fertilizer production. I chose these two because they represent two very different ways of addressing the challenge we started with. Biofertilizers can potentially reduce the dependence on supplied nutrients today, whereas on the other hand, on-site production could eventually change where the nutrient itself comes from. They are also at very different stages of commercial maturity, which makes the comparison even more useful. So before I dive into the near-term and long-term opportunities for biofertilizers and on-site fertilizer production, I wanted to talk a little bit about the momentum and talk about the investment trends in alternative crop nutrition. As you can see, more than $3 billion has been invested in the alternative crop nutrition over the 10-year period starting in 2015. But I would not over-interpret the cumulative number here. And just to put this number into perspective, like microbial solutions have represented around 70% of that funding, whereas America still accounts for 81% of the funding. And across 10 years and five categories, this investment is meaningful, but the 2021 peak is basically because during that period of time, a lot of the active innovation was getting funding. And the more relevant question is what happened after the slowdown in 2022. In 2024 and 2025, we see some investment coming back into the alternative crop nutrition, but then the investment that we saw was not distributed evenly across the five technologies and microbial solutions continued to attract the capital during that time. And then we started to see on-site fertilizer production become a more visible part of the funding mix as well. And those are two interesting areas because they address nutrient resilience in different ways. So the story here is not simply that the money is coming into the alternative crop nutrition. It is that the capital is continuing to support technologies that could reduce dependence on the existing fertilizer supply model in different ways. That doesn’t tell us whether these technologies will succeed. This is where we need to look at what innovation is actually trying to solve. And if you look at the innovation activities in the last 10 years, the 2026 data is only until January of the year 2026. But if you look at the 10-year data, patent activity started to rise again in 2024 and 2025. But like I mentioned earlier, the quantity of patents is only part of the story. You see that on-site fertilizer production, for example, still has a very small overall IP footprint in this landscape and across the biological and biochemical technologies. What matters increasingly is what companies are trying to improve. So it is not about a discovery of a new active ingredient or new extract-based solution or things like that. Mind you, this is still very important, but right now, companies are trying to solve challenges like how to improve their active ingredients. So for that, the IP we’re seeing more is on the fermentation side, the formulation side, the encapsulation side, how to make those products stable, and how to deliver those products so that they are more efficient. So essentially, how you turn a formulation technology into something functional under the commercial agriculture sector is what we are seeing the IP moving towards. So funding tells us where the capital is moving, but the patents give us some indication of what technical barriers these companies are trying to solve. And then together, funding and patents lead to the central question of the rest of the webinar. So nutrient resilience depends on performance, practical integration, and commercial scale. A technology can be novel and still have very little commercial value. So when I say nutrient resilience depends on performance, I want to be very specific about what that means here. What it means is like how much of the conventional nutrient supply this technology can realistically replace or avoid? And practical integration is basically whether the farmer can actually use it without creating another operational burden for them. Because farming operations are very hectic and they’re already used to a certain workflow and they don’t want to disrupt those workflows. And commercial scale means whether the economics and supply model remain viable beyond the temporary fertilizer disruption. Those three concepts, like the meaningful nutrient replacement, practical integration, and commercial durability, are what we will carry into the next section. And the three questions that we’re going to answer to distinguish between hype and real opportunity are: first, does it strengthen nutrient resilience? So when I say that, does it reduce the dependence of supplied fertilizer or create another credible local source of nutrients? And second, does it fit existing farm operations? Can it maintain the performance without adding any difficult storage, handling, application, or maintenance requirements? And third, is the commercial deployment realistic and durable? Are the economics viable? Can the products or systems be supplied and operated reliably? And can it scale beyond one region or one specific use case? A technology may work biologically, it may even work technically, but if it cannot remain relevant economically over the long term, it is a very different opportunity. This is why we need to assess the complete commercial proposition, not just the science behind it. So how are we going to make the assessment more systematic? We use a common scoring rubric here. So there are five main metrics here, product stability, nutrient use reduction, yield improvement potential, affordability, and manufacturing scalability. And each maps back to the question we just discussed. So nutrient use reduction and yield performance help us understand whether the technology meaningfully contributes to the resilience piece that we talked about. Product stability, on the other hand, helps us assess whether it can practically fit into the storage, distribution, and the current farm operations. And affordability and manufacturing scalability tell us whether commercial deployment can be realistic. The important point here is that low, medium, high are tied to a defined threshold. For example, let’s look into stability. A medium in the stability is somewhere retaining around 60% to 90% of functionality over a 6- to 18-month period, whereas a high score means 90% is retained beyond 18 months under the ambient storage condition. On the other hand, nutrient use reduction for a medium is like 10 to 25% reduction in synthetic inputs, whereas high is at least a 25% reduction with multi-season validation. And talking about affordability, it is benchmarked on a per-acre basis. So these are category-level scores. And they help us compare technologies consistently, but they do not replace company-specific diligence. So now let’s apply these to biofertilizers. So biofertilizers, as I mentioned earlier, are microbial products that fix atmospheric nitrogen or make the soil-bound nutrients such as phosphorus more available to crops or plants. And they can be delivered through seed treatments, liquids, granules, and other application formats. So we classify biofertilizers as a near-term engagement opportunity because the commercial product already exists. So the question is no longer whether biofertilizers are possible. The question is which products can deliver repeatable nutrient benefit while fitting within existing commercial farming systems. So let’s apply this in the biofertilizer assessment, and let’s apply it with our three questions. First, the resilience benefit. Biofertilizers improve nutrient-use efficiency and also help reduce reliance on nitrogen or phosphate inputs that the farmers apply. We give this a high score because we have seen these microbes not only improve the nutrient use efficiency, we’ve seen that companies have been able to show that they can reduce fertilizer requirements by at least 25%, or even more in some instances that the plant needs. The second is operational fit. So this is where a medium score becomes very important. We’ve seen these products, I mean, these products are basically called bug in the jug, right? So I mean, we’ve seen across the category that the reported shelf life is around somewhere from 6 to 18 months, depending on which companies are using what kind of technology and formulation and storage conditions. And the third one is commercial deployment. So this category is already at scale. We are seeing that they have seed coating, granules, liquid, and increasingly dry planter-box format that’s been used to deploy those products across the farm. We’ve seen that these innovations have already been integrated biofertilizer products into farm operations. And what that means is that some products now have enough nutrient replacement potential to matter commercially, but again, stability and ease of integration still determine whether they can scale further or not. And let’s take an example of Pivot Bio here. Pivot Bio is a great example. It’s not about rediscovering another new microbe because we know Pivot Bio has been long enough in the field of biofertilizers. And they’ve scaled significantly in the last three or four years when it comes to their product acreage. The company is fine-tuning its microbe for sure, but now they are working on how their microbes can be delivered to farmers. So in 2026, they launched a dry planter-box format for corn and cotton. And the company claims that the dry format reduces the nitrogen cost by around 30% per acre and supports up to 20% of the nitrogen replacement. And it claims there is consistent performance across diverse weather conditions. And so a dry formulation is not, inherently a novel technology. It’s been used. The strategy here is the dry planter-box format. So it allows growers to apply it to a wide range of seed choices rather than being tied to more upstream seed channels, right? The point I wanted to emphasize here is that innovation is moving from like, you know, proving the biology to making the biology easy to adopt in their field. So it is that the application flexibility can expand the commercial reach of an already proven biological platform, but adoption still has to be demonstrated. And this quote sums up what we just talked about. So as you all know that at Lux, we talk to different people across the ag value chain. And this is from an American Crop Nutrient Deficiency Company. This quote captures like, you know, the farmer does not want any extra handling steps and all that. The challenge is no longer simply proving a biological mechanism. It is about removing enough friction from the product so that it can become a part of the normal farm operations. And now let’s move from reducing the fertilizer requirement. Now let’s move from reducing the fertilizer requirement to changing where the fertilizer itself is produced. So that is on-site fertilizer production. So these are decentralized systems using approaches such as plasma or electrochemical nitrogen fixation, sometimes combined with local nutrient or agricultural waste streams. And that potentially addresses supply resilience much more directly. Instead of relying entirely on fertilizer moved from centralized production facilities, you can create another nutrient source very close to the point of demand, right? But the technical and economic hurdles are still substantially higher for on-site fertilizer production. So the long-term opportunity is monitored here. And let’s again use the same three questions that we used for biofertilizers, the resilience fit. Let’s talk about the resilience benefit here. So localized production systems can diversify nutrient supply, especially by making nutrients available and helping to overcome that regional problem. And in terms of operational fit, the fertilizer output has to work with the local application system. And also the production unit itself needs to be operated very reliably. And this is where like the energy intensity, maintenance, and catalyst durability for electrochemical approaches become very important. And lastly, the commercial deployment. This is where the category is weakest today. As you can see, the score shows a low number of developers, early stage of development, and low manufacturing scalability. So affordability, that is still very low here. So when I say the production economics remain unproven, the most important question here is simple. The commercial metrics still need to be validated, including how much the system can produce to support reasonable demand. So rather than focusing on like the chemistry, the clients should track energy use, what is the cost per ton, uptime, commissioning, and actual facility operation. So this is why this category is not like waiting for interest. It is waiting for operating evidence, which we will see in the next few years. And to give an example, let’s look into NitroCity. NitroCity is a very good example here because it shows both the potential and the limitations of the localized production model. So NitroCity uses a plasma-based process for nitrogen fixation and combines nitrogen with nutrients derived from agricultural residue. So in the case of this company, they’re using like almond-shell residue to produce their fertilizer product here. And they have a significant amount of funding to scale their production facility in California. And they do have an off-take agreement which shows there is a demand for this regionally. And the NitroCity early commercial model is particularly relevant to the organic production, as oftentimes the company compares its product with organic fertilizers. So the company reports that its product improves yield as well. But having said that, these kinds of technologies do need to show that they can scale in every region in which they operate and they’re also dependent on the feedstock as well. So clients should prioritize these opportunities where feedstock infrastructure and demand are already aligned and require operating-cost and uptime data before making larger commitments. And this is a quote from an American microbial-based crop nutrition and protection company. I mean, farmers are curious. They are willing to give the product a try no matter what. But obviously, if it doesn’t deliver a return on investment, then they probably would not be using it. That’s why novelty will create a trial. But reliability, economics, and dual value will generate repeat use. And this is particularly true for both biofertilizers and on-site fertilizer production systems. And now we’ve looked at one opportunity that is already commercial, another that remains much earlier-stage. So the question is, what has to happen next for them to become more durable parts of the crop nutrition portfolio? But let’s look at this. And for both technologies to be successful, they have to be integrated into the existing crop nutrition ecosystem, right? So that is the key. But when we look into the biofertilizers, I mean, the biology is increasingly well established. The science is being very well understood. The companies are now trying to solve how to make this product work across seed choices, equipment, or farming systems. And planter-box example is a good example of that. So one priority is like expanding the application flexibility across existing farm systems. And the second is reducing dependence on seed-specific treatment channels so that addresses the market and partnership opportunities. And the next technical layer is formulation that helps to improve the survival of these microbes and make them stable. And talking about on-site fertilizer production, it has a different set of requirements. The regional ecosystem has to align with energy feedstock where relevant, as well as infrastructure and local nutrient demand. For many electrochemical pathways, important technical hurdles such as catalyst efficiency and durability and energy supply itself must be solved. So the success of on-site fertilizer production requires two main things at the same time, the right regional ecosystem and technical improvement. And that is very different from what biofertilizers need to scale in the farmers’ field. And lastly, I wanted to close it with three takeaways. Biofertilizers offer the clearest near-term engagement opportunities. So, you know, and on-site production, on-site fertilizer production is still a conditional, long-term supply opportunity. And lastly, resilience will depend on practical integration and proven economics. So having said that, I wanted to bring us back to the question we started with. When fertilizer supply is uncertain, what can your portfolio offer? The answer should be more than another technology. It should be a credible way of maintaining the nutrient access with reliable performance, practical deployment, and economics that remain attractive over the long term. With that, I would like to end today’s presentation and I’ll take any questions you guys have. Thank you for your time.

Urbi Pathak: Thank you so much, Deepesh. We will now be taking questions that you may have on the presentation, which you can also type into the questions box. If you do not get your questions answered on this call, someone from Lux will be in touch with you right after the webinar. So Deepesh, it looks like some of your case studies resonated with our attendees. The first question is, do biofertilizers like Pivot Bio only help reduce conventional nutrient use, or do they offer other environmental benefits as well?

Deepesh Bista: Oh, that’s a great question. And I mean, another thing that I did not discuss because of the time limitation is like the benefit that we have from these microbials, right? What you’re doing is like you’re basically reducing your synthetic input in the field. That means it relates to the leaching of the nitrates that happens in the field, which is a big issue and also emissions of like nitrous oxide, which is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So these are the benefits that companies have marketed. An example, if you will, is Pivot Bio itself, they have kind of like, they have their sustainability program that accounts for like, the amount of emissions reduced. And then they help to pay farmers with their program called Innovators Program. So this is something these products do and the short answer is yes, and companies are marketing this thing as well because it does help to improve the environmental benefits too.

Urbi Pathak:

Deepesh, if you don’t mind, actually we lost the first part of the answer. So do you mind repeating the first part?

Deepesh Bista: Yeah, so let me just say this very briefly. So there is an environmental benefit associated with it because when you apply these microbial products, right? So what happens is that you’re replacing some of the synthetics. So remember, these synthetic products, when you apply them in a farmer’s field, what happens is like, you know, the nitrate leaching happens, you know, the nitrous oxide emissions happen. So, you know, those are the things that these companies like Pivot Bio are like marketing and saying, you know, we do help with the environmental benefits as well. That’s the short answer.

Urbi Pathak: That’s great. And there’s a second question. What needs to happen for companies like NitroCity to achieve scale and become price competitive?

Deepesh Bista: So I think three things need to happen, and I think I kind of touched upon that point during the presentation as well. The first is they have to prove reliable operation at the commercial scale. Second, the production cost has to become competitive with the synthetic fertilizer that’s already out in the market that they’re actually trying to replace. And lastly, they need the right regional conditions, right? And they need to be at a place where energy costs are low, a substantial amount of feedstock is available, and the infrastructure is in place, right? So those are the things that need to happen for companies like NitroCity to achieve scale. And that’s why they picked California for their first pilot project in which they’re already seeing some demand.

Urbi Pathak: Yeah. We still have some time left, so we can take a third question, right? So are we seeing adoption of biologicals for crop nutrition increase in recent years?

Deepesh Bista: I would say yes. I would say the traction we’re seeing for biologicals over the last five to seven years has been very good. But it’s not been a straight line, to be very honest with you, right? So we are seeing these products being adopted in farmers’ fields. Again, I want to bring back to Pivot Bio. I mean, Pivot Bio is a poster child for biofertilizer. When they started, I think 2018, 2019, from 20,000 or 50,000 acres, by 2024, they were already like over 5 million acres and $100 million in revenue. And even in the multiple different surveys that a lot of the ag cooperatives were conducting, they’re seeing that farmers are using these products more in recent years. But again, there’s a caveat to it. It’s like they’re using this more as a complementary product than as a replacement for the synthetic. So we are seeing traction in regulations in Brazil. The bio-input law that was formed in 2024 is also helping all these newer innovations to be easily approved and accepted and used in the field in countries like Brazil.

Urbi Pathak: That’s great. And thank you so much, Deepesh, for the entire presentation. And that concludes our webinar for today. The slide presentation and recording from this webinar will be sent to all attendees via e-mail today. After leaving the webinar, you will be prompted to complete a survey on today’s presentation. We would appreciate any feedback you may have to help inform and improve our future webinars. So take a moment and check out our upcoming webinars on our website. And thank you once again for joining us and have a great day ahead.