Protective fungicide sales increase to R$2.1 billion in Brazil

By Leonardo Gottems, Reporter for AgroPages

The BIP study (Business Intelligence Panel Soja) recently completed by Spark Strategic Intelligence found that the sector for protective fungicides used on oilseed crops grew for the sixth consecutive time in the 2020-21 harvest.

Mainly used for managing the resistance of the fungus that causes Asian rust, these fungicides achieved sales of R$2.1 billion, a 23% increase from the 2019-20 season. According to Spark, between the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 harvests, this segment already rose by 46% in terms of sales, totalling R$1.75 billion.

Spark's survey also found out that total sales of agrochemicals for application on Brazilian soybeans was R$31.3 billion during the 2020-21 season, 17% higher than in previous harvest when this figure was R$26.7 billion. In the analysis by category, sales of foliar fungicides, including protective fungicides, corresponded to 41% of the total market or R$12.7 billion, an increase of 13%.

According to Spark, the adoption rate of protective fungicides by farmers jumped to 71% from 68% during the 2019-20 harvest, while the average number of applications reached 2.1, an increase of 5.6%. Potential treated area (PAT) totalled 58.9 million hectares, a rise of 18% compared to the previous period, when it was 49.8 million hectares.

Agronomist Natalia Piai (Project Coordinator at Spark Strategic Intelligence) said the efforts to control Asian rust should again improve the performance of protectors during the 2021-22 cycle.

“This trend is justified by the increased adoption of so-called resistance management. It is a practice whose measures include the joint or alternate application of fungicides with different modes of action. In addition to being used preventively, before infections take hold, protectors can help preserve the effectiveness of other fungicide molecules, given the potential development of resistance by disease-causing fungus to active ingredients,” Piai said.

In the agricultural frontier of oilseed, the states with the highest concentrations of cultivated area, such as Mato Grosso and Rio Grande do Sul, witnessed an increase in the adoption of protectors, registering 72% and 80%, respectively, with Goiás-Distrito Federal and Mato Grosso do Sul coming in third and fourth with 64% and 78%, respectively, she added.

The survey also recorded a 13% drop in the in the soy agrochemicals market from US$6.778 billion in the 2019-20 harvest to US$5.928 billion. According to Spark, this result is linked to the negative exchange rate impact of 26% on average dollar quotations in the product purchase period, from R$3.94 in the 2019-20 season to R$5.29 in the 2020-2021 season.

Spark Strategic Intelligence gathers a wide and diverse collection of quantitative and qualitative information on the agricultural defensives and seeds markets. Over six years, through intense work at field level carried out over the past five harvests, Spark completed more than 160 special studies and 300 quotas of panel studies. During this period, the company's professionals conducted over 300,000 interviews and traveled around 4.5 million kilometers within the country.