Market Overview

The domestic agrochemical formulations market for FY2021 generated 329,500 million yen, 101.7% of the size of the previous fiscal year, based on the shipment value at manufacturers, despite being affected by decreasing crop acreage of paddy rice and extreme weathers including torrential rains and typhoons. In addition to increased shipment of bactericides for farming, herbicides for farming as well as for paddy rice stably grew. Longer hours at home amid the corona crisis had increased those who started gardening, raising demand for garden chemicals, which also favorably contributed to market expansion.

Noteworthy Topics

Promotion of Organic Farming Invigorated Development of Biotic Pesticides and Biostimulants

As sustainable society and environmental issues have been placed more importance in and out of the country, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries (MAFF) in its “Green Food System Strategy” released the target of a 10 percent reduction in use of chemical pesticides by 2030 and to 50% by 2050, aiming to attain organic farming as the environmentally preservable agriculture.

Against this backdrop, biological control and IPM (Integrated Pest Management) that use bacteria, biotic pesticides, or biostimulants to prevent pests, different ways from chemical pesticides, are in the spotlight. Biological methods to prevent pests include “microbial pesticides” that use specific live bacteria that protect plants from pathogens or from vermin selected among various bacteria generally exist in nature and made them more usable, and “predator pesticides” that use the predator and nonpredator relationship, or the parasite and non-parasite relationship. Biostimulant is a concept of stimulating plants to enhance the power that they originally possess, thereby to maintain the harvest volume and quality, and to improve storage after harvest.

Microbial pesticide, biotic pesticide, and biostimulant use the food-chain system in the nature, or use the potential of what the plant has, and are all effective to reduce the use of chemical counterparts. This trend has urged each of agrichemical manufacturers to develop their products and related materials of microbial pesticide, biotic pesticide, and biostimulant, aiming to achieve the target of reducing chemical pesticide use. Japanese agriculture can be said to be starting to dramatically change its direction to realize sustainable farming under the Green Food System Strategy.”

Future Outlook

As giving up of farming continues due to decreasing numbers of and aging farmers, deregulation as a part of agricultural reform has expanded new entries to agriculture by corporative bodies, changing the agricultural structure.
Because of soaring costs for raw material as well as transportation, which has started being passed on to

the product prices and has generated demand in advance from foreseeing further price rise, the FY2022 domestic agrochemical formulations market size by shipment value at manufacturers is expected to reach 336,900 million yen, 102.2% on a YoY basis.

While the market is projected to level off after FY2022, higher product prices stemming from soaring material cost can bring about the market size in FY2030 to reach 349,500 million yen, 103.7% of that in FY2022.

Research Outline