Populations are growing, and our cities are sprawling further and further.

This land consumption is at odds with increasing demand for food, animal feed and biofuel, all of which require large swathes of arable land.

Farmers are under a lot of pressure to improve their crop yield with limited agricultural space, which has increased the demand for agrochemicals that help enhance crop yield and quality.

This pressure to do more with less space is a major factor leading to growth in the global crop protection chemicals market, which is expected to grow steadily from 2014-2019, at a CAGR of 6.15%.

The color in the graph represents the agricultural land as a percentage of total land area. A darker shade represents a higher percentage of agricultural land. Source: World Bank

But these chemicals—namely fungicides, herbicides, insecticides—have certainly seen their fair share of controversy over the years.

Increasing concerns about the effects of pesticides on bees have led to a regulatory ban on certain types of pesticides, especially in the EU.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) released a report on the effects of neonicotinoid pesticide technology on the bee population, which led to an EU-wide ban on neonicotinoid pesticides in 2013. However, leading market vendors such as Syngenta have challenged the ban, claiming that the assessment made by the EFSA was flawed.

And concerns about the effects of pesticides certainly don’t stop at bees. According to the Ministry of Health in Brazil, there were 2,178 reported cases of pesticide poisoning in the country in 2007. This number ballooned to 4,537 in 2013, with the number of pesticide-related deaths jumping from 132 to 206 in the same time period.

These numbers are hardly specific to Brazil. There have been a slew of accusations that large companies are poisoning farmers with pesticides, and doing very little about the adverse health effects of these chemicals.

Adoption of biopesticides is a small attempt to mitigate harm

In response to both health and environmental concerns surrounding pesticides, more emphasis is being put on development and use of biopesticides. This segment is still a relatively small part of the overall market, but it’s growing, thanks to implementation of sustainable agricultural practices, growing demand for organic food products, and government support worldwide for biopesticide R&D.

“Governments worldwide are putting an emphasis on economic, environmental, and social sustainability in the agriculture sector,” says Faisal Ghaus, Vice President of Technavio.

“Farmers are increasingly depending on organic practices and have initiated efforts to optimize soil productivity while simultaneously preserving their ability to function as a healthy medium, whic has created a shift toward organic alternatives such as biopesticides.”

Growing adoption of GM crops will bolster agrochemicals

But despite small gains in the biopesticides market segment, the crop protection chemicals market is still dominated by herbicides, fungicides and insecticides.

The market dominance of these chemical is compounded by the fact that, in addition to producing pesticides, a number of leading vendors in the crop protection market also offer GM seeds. These chemicals are used extensively to help ensure that GM crops are successful and have adequate yields.

Source: International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications

And given that the land used for GM crops is forecast to reach 275.3 million ha in 2019 (up from 181.5 million ha in 2014), demand for crop protection chemicals is only expected to increase over the next four years.