Soybean pesticide market grows 50% in Brazil, to US$11.4 bn

With a 6% increase in the soybean planted area in the 2022-23 harvest, which exceeded 42 million hectares, pesticides for the crop moved U$11.4 billion, an increase of 50% compared to the previous cycle ($7.657 billion).

The data are from the FarmTrak survey by Kynetec consultancy. The company said, the oilseed remained the main crop of the sector's industry, followed by corn and sugar cane.

According to Kynetec's account manager, Lucas Lima Alves, herbicides were the products most in demand: they corresponded to 35% of sales or $4.1 billion, an increase of 70%, in dollars, compared to the 2021-22 harvest ($2.391 billion).

″Historically, the category of fungicides has led the ranking of the most representative agrochemicals in soy,″ he informed.

According to Alves, the price of herbicides was pushed up due to the increase in the cost of inputs of key molecules for crop management, including glyphosates, responsible for almost 60% of transactions in the segment.

″FarmTrak found that the producer has increased the use of specific herbicides, such as graminicides, pre-emergent. The adoption of products for narrow sheets increased from 46%, in 2018-19, to 77% in 2022-23,″ he explained.

The executive also points out that the use of specific herbicides by the producer has advanced throughout the agricultural frontier, given difficult-to-control herbs such as bitter grass, not corn, chicken foot grass, and others.

″Residual pre-emergents also rose in adoption to 45% from 34% in 2020-21. Such products help control the seed bank, preventing weeds from sprouting,″ Alves commented.

Fungicides and insecticides

According to FarmTrak Soja 2022-23, fungicides ranked second among the agrochemicals most applied to oilseeds.

Sales totaled $3.7 billion, 33% of the total, against $2.613 billion in the previous harvest, a growth of 43%.

The third category in the survey, insecticides, also drove the sector's performance: it reached 21% of the amount of $2.4 billion, compared to$1.721 billion in the previous cycle, a 40% jump.

Complementing the Kynetec survey - resulting from personal interviews with 3,700 soybean farmers, products for seed treatment, nematicides, and others, which, added up, moved around $1.2 billion.

(Editing by Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages)