Biopesticide

In the last three years, sustainability, one of the main current themes, has also reached the field. Seeking to develop products that could act on plantations, affecting the environment less and less, companies chose to invest in the creation of biodefenses, solutions that are less aggressive and as effective as those already available on the market.

As a result, some regions, such as Latin America, saw growth in this segment. While there was a drop in the sale of traditional agricultural pesticides, some crops set precedents for organic pesticides to enter the scene, as is the case with fruits and vegetables with their pre-harvest sprays. Especially in Brazil, bionematicides have also grown. And even though this market has seen a decline, these specific niches point to a good outlook in the near future.

In Brazil alone, one of the main countries in Latin America for this segment, biological products should register an increase of between 15% and 20% in sales in the coming years, according to projections by the Brazilian Association of Biological Control Companies (ABCBio), released at the end of the last year. According to the agency, today around 51 companies hold bio product registrations in the country, selling around 118 solutions. And the acceleration of studies and approvals in this area can be accompanied by the high number of registrations obtained in 2015: there were 20, a number 135% higher than the average in the last six years.

What favors this market is that registration for this type of technology is much faster. This happens because the responsible authorities have offered specific teams to evaluate biopesticides, with different requirements from traditional analyses.

IHARA began operating in this market some time ago and has followed all its transformations. A traditional manufacturer of pesticides, the company has come out ahead of the market, dedicating an exclusive area to bio products since 2014. Since then, the company has invested in several projects and has already presented some technologies for registration. One of them, in fact, should come out at the end of the second half of the year, when the market should become aware of Eco-Shot (Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain D747), precisely for fruit and vegetable crops.

Today, the sale of biological products already represents around 10% of IHARA's revenue, which motivates us to advance even further in this sector, seeking partnerships with companies and universities, national and foreign, to develop new research and products. For this important step, we have the support of our shareholders, who also invest in research in this area, as well as that of large industries in the sector. The union with these large companies allows us to present a complete portfolio of solutions for our customers and farmers.

But why are biodefensive products so essential? What makes them so different from what we can already find on the market? There are some aspects that can reinforce this growth. Among them, a greater focus on sustainable agriculture; greater resistance of pests to chemical pesticides; limited supply of new molecules and the significant technological advances seen in the area of ​​biological pesticides, with the development of more efficient formulations with longer shelf life.

The segment was also favored by recent phytosanitary problems that have arisen in some crops in Brazil. Such as Helicoverpa armigera, which caused great damage in 2014 and at the end of last year, causing enormous losses to farmers and whose control, economically viable, was only achieved thanks to the introduction of microbiological insecticides and parasitoid insects into the crop management plan. pests. IHARA was part of this process with GESMSTAR, a bioinsecticide considered one of the most effective in combating Helicoverpa.

We cannot say whether the market will continue to behave this way. But research indicates that Brazil and Latin America still have a good way to go and a large space to support the growth of biodefensive products, making these solutions an extremely successful market niche, a viable option for the continued growth of Brazilian agriculture and offering consumers an even healthier and more nutritious product.

*Clayton Emanuel da Veiga, Product Manager at IHARA, has a degree in Agricultural Engineering, an MBA in Marketing with an emphasis on Commercial Operations and Business Management. He started at IHARA in 2003 as Technical Sales Administrator, later assuming the roles of Market Development Consultant, District Commercial Manager, Regional Marketing Manager and Marketing Planning Manager.