Crop Protection

High efficiency and low toxicity are development trends of pesticides. Tough environmental protection policies have huge impact on pesticide industry

The world pesticide industry experienced a period of rapid growth in the early 21^st century. The global pesticide sales revenue was $26.0 billion in 2001. The pesticide market reached the peak in 2008 during the decade of 2001-2010, but with impact from the subsequent global financial crisis, the stable growth of pesticide industry was interrupted. During 2010-2013, the world pesticide industry went through a stage of restorative growth owing to the larger planting area of GM crops, the greater frequency of extreme weathers and the higher demand of grains. The sales revenue reached $65.0 billion in 2015. The average annual growth of the sales revenue was 5-6% during 2001-2015.

The essence of agricultural production is that humans take the initiative to acquire the gift of nature, while the essence of pesticides is that humans challenge the power of nature and use their own strength to control impact of natural factors on agriculture. The input/output ratio in the application of pesticides is very high, usually standing at 1:6 at least or even reaching 1:40. In other words, the input in pesticides can get a 6-40 folds return in agricultural production.   

Drives for the growth of pesticide industry roughly include the size of population, cultivated land area, crop structure, economic development, technical development and policies, etc. The growth of population, the changes of cultivated land area, the increase of rehabilitation index, the raise of cash crop proportion, the improvement of people’s living standard caused by economic development, the policies to restrict high-toxicity pesticides to promote sales of low-toxicity pesticides, and the technical progress in the development, production and application of pesticides can all facilitate the development of the global pesticide industry. The migration of hazardous biotic communities and the change of drug fastness also affect the development of pesticide industry. The situation is complicated when all these factors interact with each other, however, pesticide industry will always maintain the macro trend of sustained development.

Comparison between Domestic and Foreign Pesticide Industry