The growing importance of biopesticides in Europe

Political and regulatory pressures are causing a clear shift in the European crop protection market away from conventional pest and disease control. At the same time persistent demands from retail players and consumers for reductions of chemical residues in produce also result in increasing investigation of alternative biocontrol products.  
 

Industry estimates put a global value of €2 billion on biocontrol with annual growth of 10-15% in the market, reaching a possible €6 billion by 2020. The European market (EU28) currently represents more than 25% of the global biocontrol market, which includes biopesticides, pheromones, plant growth regulators and beneficials. Biocontrol will continue to grow in importance relative to conventional crop protection products to the extent that as much as 25% of the total crop protection sales in Europe could be based on biocontrol products in five years’ time.
 

With this shift comes added pressure in the regulatory environment for biopesticides. Requirements and restrictions rather similar to those for conventional products will result in increased professionalism in the sector relating to R&D, testing, patents, shelf life and reliability and will take out the non-performing “snake oils”. Consumers will always see greener products as safer products, but we still need to prove that such things e.g. bacteria sprayed onto a crop to protect it from disease attack, will not be harmful to the consumer in any way. Whilst this is of course a good thing, for we all want the products used in our food production to be well tested, properly understood and proven safe, it will impact on the ability of smaller companies to develop such new “green” products, given the costs of meeting the ever increasing regulations. It presents a dilemma as their much needed invention may be stifled and the food supply industry will become increasingly dependent on the larger companies for new products unless a simpler, albeit safe, route can be found for biopesticide registrations. The Dutch authorities are currently investigating the possibilities of simplifying the regulatory procedures, perhaps in terms of timescale and testing requirements, in a way appropriate to the biopesticide portfolio, with a view to encouraging more such products to be brought to the EU market.
 

For farmers the pressure to move to biocontrol requires a substantial behavioural change to a more integrated approach to protection of their crops. They are used to being able to achieve more or less perfect control of a pest or disease with conventional chemical controls. With biocontrols they are far more dependent on the biological circumstances of the crop and the climatic conditions, since biopesticides break down quicker and in field crops may only achieve 80% control. At present the greatest uptake is therefore in protected cropping, where the environment can be controlled. It is likely that integrated programmes combining biopesticides and conventional crop protection will continue to be developed and adopted gradually in outdoor crops to give lower residues whilst limiting risk to grower incomes. 
 

We are still at the beginning of evolution into the biopesticide world, so there is huge scope for further developments, including potentially making green products longer lasting and more robust, which will make them more acceptable to growers. Nature has far more compounds available than we can invent, so we must exploit what is there but we must do so in a way that ensures safe products for the growers, the consumers and for the environment. If they can be guided well through the process of registration, future biopesticide products will play an increasingly important role in the provision of healthy food with little or no chemical residues.