India, being the second most populated country of the world, needs abundant of food to feed its everyday growing population. Every day we need more food but from the limited land we have. And more and more of land is also being scarified for development of country’s fortune. As a reflex to it, to stretch our limit of the quantity, several add ons are used in the form of fertilizers, pesticides, genetically modified crops and much such scientific advancements to produce abundant crop from the limited land we have. Various crop protection methods and products usage have increased in time and has been proved a boon to such industries.
Indian crop protection market was estimated at $ 3.8 billion in FY12 with exports constituting about 50% of the market. The crop protection market has experienced strong growth in the past and is expected to grow further at approximate 12% p.a. to reach $ 6.8 billion by FY17. The growth would be largely driven by export demand which is expected to grow at 15-16% p.a, while domestic demand is expected to grow at 8-9% p.a. Biopesticides, which currently represent only 4.2% of the overall pesticide market in India, are expected to exhibit an annual growth rate of about 10% in the coming years.
Indian crop protection industry is largely dominated by insecticides which form about 65% of share of the industry. Other segments like herbicides, fungicides and other (rodenticides/ nematocides) form 16%, 15% and 4%, respectively.
The Indian market is different from the global industry in terms of consumption patterns. Globally, herbicides constitute about 44% of the crop protection market followed by fungicides at 27%, insecticides at 22% and others at 7%. Favorable climatic conditions in North America and Europe drive herbicide consumption in those areas. Insecticides usage has also gone down in developed markets with increased usage of genetically modified (GM) crops.
Tropical climatic conditions and high production of paddy, cotton, sugarcane and other cereals in India drive the consumption of insecticides. Availability of cheap labor for manual weed picking also contributed to low consumption of herbicides in India. However, the trend is expected to change in future as herbicides, now, are the fastest growing segment due to increasing farm labour wages in India.
