Will Growers Reduce Their Spending on Biologicals in 2024?
Editor’s note: Each year, 2BMonthly’s State of the Industry feature includes a Q&A with executives from leading biocontrol and biostimulants companies worldwide. The 2023 feature touched on a wide range of prevailing topics including the biologicals M&A climate, critical success factors for scaling biologicals companies, and the ongoing challenges facing biocontrol registrations in the EU. In an excerpt posted at CropLife’s sister brand, AgriBusiness Global, experts offered their insight on how much (or little) growers will invest in biologicals in 2024.
Q: With dramatically lower farm income reported in 2023, do you see growers reducing investment in biological product purchases in 2024?
Eduard Vallverdú Vidal, CEO, Sustainable Agro Solutions (SAS): We have seen how input costs and farmer incomes have affected and changed the buying criteria and inputs purchases. This doesn’t necessarily mean that investment in biologicals will be reduced, but for sure any input investment will be more carefully analyzed by farmers. As a biostimulants manufacturer, we will need more than ever to show the benefits of our products use very clearly to farmers. Thus, they will know that investing in these products is worth and a good choice even with a more limited budget.
Frederic Beudot, Director & Global Portfolio Leader – Biologicals, Corteva Agriscience: Biologicals will continue to be an important tool for farmers looking to boost their productivity and keep their farms healthy today and into the future. Biologicals help farmers optimize profitability by addressing specific challenges for each crop, in each field. We anticipate seeing greater adoption as farmers observe value from these innovative technologies.
Salman Mir, Chief Operating Officer, Valent BioSciences: We saw less of an impact to our business on biorational products during 2023; however, we recognize that growers must constantly work to manage their on-farm risk as a function of performance (yield), efficiency (time, cost) and profitability (return on investment), and those considerations will continue to be important influencers in 2024. Every year, growers must be strategic and thoughtful about the inputs they use as they weigh their expected returns. The market dynamics in 2024 will require that growers rely increasingly on crop inputs that are science-driven and provide a proven return on their investment. We anticipate growers will continue to purchase and use biologicals in 2024 and expect the most used biologicals will be those that growers have had positive experiences with in the past or those that have been strongly endorsed by trusted researchers and/or crop consultants.
Read more at AgriBusiness Global.
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