Is Biologicals Growth in the LATAM Market Scalable?
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 2024 feature touched on a wide range of prevailing topics including the investment climate for biologicals, where the industry’s biggest innovations are likely to come from, and the ongoing challenges related to the European regulatory climate. In the excerpt below, executives share insight into whether the tremendous market growth in LATAM is scalable.
Q: Is the growth our industry has experienced in LATAM scalable?
Troy Bettner, Vice President Sales and Technical Services, Bioworks: Yes, I believe it is. The U.S. is 10 years behind Brazil from the regulatory and channel adoption of biologicals.
Frederic Chagnon, President & General Manager, Plant Care Business Unit, Lallemand: The short answer is no — unrealistic expectations have led to too many entrants in this market, many of which are not approaching it seriously or with long-term goals. This is destroying the reputation of biologicals, as growers become wary of yet-another-bio-company/product. Growers are faced with too many options today. We need to invest in building the necessary trust with growers; this takes time and effort.
Jim Thompson, Director of Business Development, Global Green Solutions, AMVAC: Yes, AMVAC’s LATAM team has shown the best growth rates of any entity within AMVAC over the last 4-5 years. Growth rates have been well over 30% consistently with our Costa Rica–based team. The driver of this growth has been the successful programmatic approach of combining biologicals with our conventional chemistry offerings. Our biological business in LATAM has continued to grow as a percentage of the overall business, and we expect that trend to continue. In addition, market access continues to be a critical success factor in growing biologicals. AMVAC has full commercial operations in several countries in Central America and South America including supply chain, regulatory, and sales and marketing.
Vladyslav Bolokhovskyi, CEO, BTU Biotech: We believe using biologicals in arable crops is a big niche for international growth. BTU’s biologicals are already used on more than 4 m ha of arable land, mainly open field crops. However, using biologicals on such a scale requires proper pricing policy and technical support. It’s still quite new for the farmers in Europe to use biologicals in field crops, so the industry needs to invest a lot to change the market perception. The growth of the biological products industry in LATAM is not directly scalable in the same way as in other regions due to different climatic conditions and regulatory policies.
Eda Reinot, CEO, Certis Biologicals: Yes, it is scalable. LATAM is a very progressive region in agriculture, and it drives in innovative, modern, and effective approaches for crop production and bio-nutrition and bio-protection as crop production inputs. I have had an opportunity to work in the agribusinesses who have significant stake in LATAM, especially in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and I have been always impressed about the motivation and progressive mind set of the new generation of farmers / growers in that region.
View more expert insight on the state of the biologicals industry here.
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