Feature
Facing the Real Challenges of the Agricultural Market
By José Nolasco
Strategy & Innovation director in Tradecorp
According to the United Nations, the world population is
projected to reach 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. This
population growth will escalate food demand to unprecedented
levels with potential food scarcity in some areas.
However, the big challenge is not only producing enough
food to feed the world. Trends are changing: healthy and
safe food demand is also on the rise. Consumers expect and
supermarkets demand produce with lower environmental impact
and sustainable use of natural resources. Water and farmland
are limited. Climate change makes the situation even more
complicated, with greater weather variations and multiple stress
scenarios impacting crops’ yield.
So, the struggle is not only to feed the planet. There is a
much bigger picture: we need to help farmers increase their
yield, the quality of their produce and their profitability in a highly
unfavourable scenario; and, the severity of this situation will be
even more demanding as the population grows.
Facing the real challenge
Irrigation, fertilization, soil management, pests and diseases,
among others, are variables that farmers need to consider
in their crop management, but these are no longer the main
challenges for farmers. Plant nutrition and plant protection by
themselves are not enough to achieve the crop’s full potential.
Under the huge number of unexpected climatic conditions,
farmers are facing every single year all along the crop cycle,
coupled with the dramatic impact on their yield, quality and
profitability, is the real matter now. Abiotic stress caused by
environmental conditions (frost, temperature, salinity, drought,
light, etc.) is strongly impacting the physiology of the plant and
affecting the yield and quality of the produce.
Therefore, the new paradigm requires including abiotic
stress management as a vital issue in crop management and
not taking it as something to be done only when the stress
70 Annual Review 2019
episode is forecasted, or even worse, has already happened.
The use of biostimulants is key to facing this challenge: not only
do they help plants overcome abiotic stress, boost yield and
quality, they also have a major role on Nutrient Use Efficiency.
Biostimulant market growth
In this scenario, there is no doubt of the role of biostimulants
in facing the current challenges of agriculture. In fact, the growth
of the biostimulant market is a clear indicator of the importance
that this segment has gained in the past few years. Different
market studies (Dunhan Trimmer, Future Market Insight,
Market & Market, Mordor Intelligence, P&S Market Research,
Scalar Market Research, Zion Market Research among others)
estimate the size of the biostimulant market to be around $2.3
billion in 2020 and reaching more than $3 billion in 2022.
According to the EBIC (European Biostimulants Industry
Council), Europe is the largest market for plant biostimulants,
where Spain, France and Italy are the main players. North
America is dominated by the US, and South America is led by
Brazil. The highest growth rates are, nonetheless, expected in
the Asia Pacific region, mainly due to the increase in demand
from China and India.
The biostimulation market is currently divided into several
different categories: amino acids (AA), botanical extracts, humic
substances, inorganic products, microorganisms and their
lixiviates, and seaweed extracts, where humics, seaweeds and
amino acids make up the largest groups.
Biostimulant innovation
Even if the market for these products is now growing, there
is still an aura of suspicion surrounding them in some cases.
This situation is often the consequence of the previous era,
when biostimulants were sometimes developed and sold with