Charles Victor Magro
Analyst · Mizuho
Yes. I wouldn't say there's a huge disconnect. Look, we watch farmer margins very carefully. And today, I'd say if you just take the U.S. farmer and say, the Brazilian farmer, they're operating in a market that they've seen many, many times before in their history, right? So we have relatively low crop prices. If they own their land, they're still quite profitable. If they're renting land, margins are quite thin. And in some cases, depending on productivity, they could be negative. And they will farm like that all day long. Look, I'll tell you, I just spent most of the spring season traveling through Argentina, Brazil, Canada and of course, through the U.S. And every farmer that I talked to wanted more of our technology, especially when it comes to Seed technology. They need the yield. When things are this tight, they really need the yield. It could be the difference between being profitable and not being profitable with a few bushels per acre. So as long as we have the price for value, in other words, we bring genetic gain to the farm and that's our promise to the farmer, right? If you buy their new products, yes, they may cost you more, but you're better off financially. It's a very simple process. And so I'm actually very hopeful that we will just continue with this strategy because farmers are asking for it. In fact, I'd say farmers want us to take the returns from our Seed and put it back into our R&D pipeline, and they know that, that's not free. So I think we've got a great view here. Do we all wish that crop pricing was a little higher? Absolutely. And like I said, I've got a view today that the fundamentals of this business are actually stronger than the crop pricing. And what the market is expecting is a huge crop. And then the trade uncertainty is also weighing on the futures price. So we'll know a lot more, I think, in the next quarter or two. But with the consumption continuing to increase, I think that over time, this thing will normalize. But I haven't met one farmer that doesn't plan to increase their production and productivity over my travels this year. So hopefully, that helps.