India is a leading producer of pesticides in Asia with over 400 million acres under cultivation and over 60% of the country’s economy dependent on the agricultural sector to a substantial extent. Nearly 30% of the potential crops in India are lost to insects, weeds and rodent attacks. Pesticides play a crucial role in protecting crops from damage by weeds, pests, insects and fungus, both before and after harvest. This helps to increase crop yields, which is important due to the shrinking cultivable land in the country. The consumption of pesticides in India although low has been gaining strong foothold primarily against the backdrop of growing farmer awareness, incomes, increasing alternatives to the monsoons, government initiatives, self-sufficiesny in food grains and others. Despite these growing prospects, some of the major challenges that circumference the Indian agrichemical market include costly and time consuming R&D proceures, unorganized distribution channel, lack of farmer participation in government aided agricultural programs, stringent process of product registeration, surging inflation and availability of cheap and supirious pesticides.
Pesticides industry in India has been broadly segmented into six categories including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, biopesticides, plant growth regulators and rodenticides. Of the aforementioned, insecticides commanded the highest share of around 45% in the overall pesticides market revenue, resulting aggregating sales worth INR ~ million during FY’2013. In spite of leading the market, the segment’s market share has observed a steady decline over the last few years. Followed by the insecticides, the market share of herbicides was recorded to be the second highest. Herbicide is a swiftly growing sector in the overall pesticides market. Bio-pesticide was observed another important segment in the market. Bio-pesticides, currently constituting a small segment has a immense potential for growth in the years ahead primarily owing to government support and increasing awareness about use of non-toxic, environment friendly pesticides in the country.
The pesticides consumption in India has been unevenly spread across various regions. While the country’s northern region forms majority of the pesticides consumption, the eastern and north eastern region constitue the lowest share. Some of the major pesticides consuming states in India include Andhara Pradesh, UP, Maharashtra Punjab Haryana West Bengal, Gujrat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Indian crop protection industry is capital intensive and highly regulated industry. The industry has been mainly composed of technical grade manufacturers and formulators. The technical grade producers usually sell premium quality chemicals in the bulk to the formulators, who then prepare formulations by mixing the carriers, solvents, surface active agents and other relevant compounds. UPL, Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, Rallis India and BASF are some of the major companies operating in the industry organized segment constituting the major portion of the industry’s revenues as recorded during FY’2013.
According to the research report “India Pesticides Industry Analysis to 2018 – Led by Advent of Technologically Advanced Biopesticides” by Ken Research, the Indian crop protection market is expected to witness a growth in its consumption owing to factors such as growing farmer awarness, farmers prosperity, inclining demand for organic food, increased focus on R&D, expansion of the contract farming and GDP growth.
“Several factors including rising population, inflating agricultural commodity prices, favourable rain pattern, increased adoption of new technologies and growing farmer preference towards high-value and high-quality products and others are some of the factors expected to drive the industry’s growth in the future” according to the Research Analyst, Ken Research.
The report provides detailed overview on the pesticides in India and helps the readers to identify the ongoing trends in the industry and anticipated growth in future depending upon changing industry dynamics in coming years. The report will help industry consultants, agro-chemicals companies, suppliers and other stakeholders align their market centric strategies according to ongoing and expected trends in the future.
