Pesticides are often viewed unfavourably with concerns about public health and the environment. But crop protection products remain an essential tool for safeguarding crop yields and ensuring global food security.
“In our global survey, we found that if the farmers do not use any insecticide or fungicide, the loss is at 40. In China, it’s almost the same — 30% to 40% — if farmers don’t useany crop protection products during the planting season,” said Dr Tan Siang Hee, executive director of CropLife Asia.
And we can’t afford food production to decline any further. A 2024 report by the United Nation’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) expects the world’s population to continue growing over the next five to six decades. At that rate, it would reach a peak of around 10.3 billion people in the mid-2080s, up from 8.2 billion in 2024.
That can only mean one thing — more food is needed to feed a burgeoning population.
But climate change is making that task harder for farmers every season. Crops are facing threats mounting in severity, from unpredictable and extreme weather to resilient pests and disease strains.
Crop protection is the basis of food production and security. It encompasses the strategies, methods, to safeguard crops from potential threats. This includes pesticides, biological control, agricultural practices, mechanical methods, and advanced digital tools such as drones and artificial intelligence (AI).
Farmers defend their yields with a variety of crop protection solutions, some of which carry long-term human and environmental costs. It is a cycle that modern agriculture struggles to break.
“Evolution always fights back. Fungal diseases, insects, they’re all becoming resistant, and the ability to come up with newer and newer ways to fight back against them is hard,” said Chinmay Soman, co-founder and CEO of Earthsense, a US-based agtech company that develops autonomous, AI-powered agriculture robots.
Innovation in crop protection is crucial to support global food production, especially as it becomes more challenging to tackle.
Across major crops like corn, wheat, soybean, oat, and barley, there remains a significant gap between what is potentially possible and what is typically achieved on the farms. For instance, record yields can reach 20,000 kg/ha for corn, yet average yields fall far below this potential — around one-fifth of the record yield.
This discrepancy is largely due to abiotic stresses like heat, salinity, and nutrient-poor soils, as well as biotic stresses such as pests, diseases, and weeds.
“This should give us a sense of how much we are losing towards pest and diseases. We are getting less and less. And the farmers? They are losing a lot,” said Tan.
From 2008 to 2018, drought cause 38% of crops and livestock to be loss, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UN FAO).
Asia was considered the “world’s most disaster-prone region” with more than 80 disasters killing more than 5,000 and affecting 50 million people.
According to AgbioInvestor’s Agribusiness Global 2024 report, crop protection is forecasted to reach around $80bn in value by 2028.
“On the average, we are hovering at around $75bn globally. The trajectory is still on the up trend because a lot of farmers have not fully transitioned to using different chemicals like biopesticides. The market is really growing,” said Tan.
Biologicals: Nature-based defence
Biologicals, natural or nature-derived products, have become a key part of sustainable agriculture and are often used alongside or instead of synthetic chemicals to manage pests, diseases, and weeds.
“There’s a great future for biologicals in terms of contributing to sustainability in food production and regenerative agriculture. Unfortunately, it is still at a very early stage,” said CS Liew, managing director of Singapore-based Pacific Agriscience.
CS Liew, managing director of Singapore-based Pacific Agriscience recounted that 10 years ago, biologicals were thought of as “snake oil”.
“But in the last 10 years, a lot of science has gone into this area to develop biological solutions to the point that we are at today.”
And today, there is strong and growing demand with stricter regulations on synthetics and consumer demand for organic, eco-friendly produce. This is fuelled by the technological advancements in biotech.
“We have a lot more interesting molecules and microbials coming along. Secondly, there’s a lot of growing awareness about the impact of chemicals on our food. And in general, there’s a larger group that says, I want to be clean, I want to keep chemicals free. I think that’s creating a boom,” said Dr Ezhil Subbian, co-founder and CEO of String Bio.
“For 200 years, we’ve used a lot of chemicals in our soil, in our environment. We’re starting to say, can I do this more sustainably? Does it have to be this way? I think you might have seen that trifecta happen today, which is then driving the biologicals coming into the market space.”
However, that market still dwarfs in comparison to its chemical counterparts.
“The chemical fertiliser industry is around USD210bn worldwide. The chemical pesticide industry is USD75bn worldwide. Unfortunately, from the biologicals side — which is really bio-stimulants, bio-pesticides, and bio-fertilisers — it’s just under USD10bn. So imagine, chemical fertilisers, chemical pesticides combined is about USD300bn billion U.S. dollars. Whereas, on the bio-solutions side, it’s only USD10bn,” said Liew.
“The biggest market for bio-solutions happens to be Brazil, for the key reason that farms are very big in Brazil… Unfortunately for the rest of the world, it is still very small.”
Despite this, Liew has high hopes for the growth of biologicals and their role in the quest towards sustainable farming.
“Having said all that, there’s a huge potential going forward if we want to attain sustainability and attain regenerative agricultural practices. Biological solutions are really the answer to achieving sustainability.”
Despite its potential, the biologicals market is grappling with several key challenges. Subbian said that the main challenge is the lack of “right enablers in place” to “capitalise on the market changes happening today”.
“I think in general, there is a first immediate response of saying, I don’t know what this is about. And I think previously, there’s been a little bit of bad experience, perhaps, with GMOs being introduced to the market.”
Regulation: Standardisation needed
Liew added that the biologicals market was hindered by a “confusing” regulatory landscape.
“You have overregulated markets, like the EU and parts of Asia. For instance, China doesn’t make it easy to register a biological solution. On one hand, you have over-regulation and then you have a free-for-all.”
Subbian highlighted a lack of standardisation that is hindering the growth of biologicals.
“A biostimulant is biostimulant in India, because India has a biostimulant regulation policy… Now the US doesn’t have a biostimulant policy, so we have to register it as a biofertiliser or an inoculant. It’s the same product but it’s like everyone is looking at an elephant but one is looking at it from the tail, the other is looking from the head, and another from the side… Perhaps it’s also one of the reasons why biologicals are not scaling fast enough.”
Subbian believes the market will benefit from harmonisation in terms of regulation.
“When you talk about patents, there’s something called a patent superhighway. That is if a patent gets patented in the US, I can use that to get my patents approved in countries that sign up for a patent superhighway… If we have a regulated superhighway for agriculture and biologicals, when we have our biological approved by India or by the US, I can then have a regulated superhighway for all the countries that align with that harmonisation. That’s an enabler that has to happen globally for technologies to scale. That’s the only way forward.”
Echoing the statements of Liew and Subbian, Tan said the regulatory landscape in this are in great need of standardisation. Even the most cutting-edge agricultural innovations are at risk if the regulatory framework does not support its adoption.
Tan added that this would eventually affect the farmer the most, because they will effectively be locked out of accessing the very tools that could improve their productivity.
Crop protection products are highly regulated to ensure they conform to the highest safety and ethical standards. Regulations are also tightening increasingly as environmental concerns mount.
In May 2025, the European Union (EU) announced sweeping plant protection regulations aimed at safeguarding public health, environmental safety, and sustainability. The regulations announced stricter residue limits and the phasing out of certain chemical pesticides. At the same time, it aims to fast-track biological alternatives to promote safer, more sustainable food production.
“We have no issue with the regulations tightening because we want to make sure that only the good products are in the marketplace,” said Tan.
He added that CropLife Asia takes an active role in regulatory matters through the Sustainable Pesticide Management Framework (SPMF), which works with relevant stakeholders to ultimately use pesticides sustainably and advance innovation. In addition to training farmers, the program also aims to build regulatory resiliency.
“This is so that we can educate our regulators to be able to do the risk assessment. Number two, a lot of people like to ban product without a pipeline or pathway for us to introduce new products. Sometimes the pipeline to introduce product are equally delayed. On one hand, old one cannot register, and you cannot out put a new one. Then farmers end up having less and less tools in their box,” said Tan.
A 2024 report published by AgbioInvestor on behalf of CropLife International, Time and Cost of New Agrochemical Product Discovery, Development and Registration, highlighted how both cost and time taken to bring a new pesticide to market has risen steadily over the years.
On average, it would take 12.3 years and $301m to bring a pesticide to market, said the report. This illustrates a challenge in bringing innovative solutions to the market to enhance the farmer’s toolkit.
SPMF has launched in Thailand and Vietnam and will soon launch in Indonesia this year.
Technology: Smarter agriculture in action
Technology like drones have played a transformative role in crop protection, helping farmers mitigate labour challenges while help them become more precise and productive. It has certainly become an integral part of the toolkit.
Earthsense combines AI, robotics, and data analytics to help farmers manage pests, diseases, and crop health more efficiently and sustainably.
“We do target crop protection, that is where we can really make a difference. Our robots can assess the damage, communicate with another robot to contain and control the disease or insect outbreak. This is a big part of the solution, not just to control cost, but how fast resistance develops,” said Soman.
“If you’re just broadly spraying everything everywhere, then you’re creating a lot of opportunities for evolution to catch up. But if the spray is targeted and highly effective, then you’re slowing down the development of resistance.”
Earthsense was founded to address the mounting labour challenges in agriculture.
“When we look back to 50 years ago, there used to always be someone on the field. Someone that’s intimately familiar with the plants, the insects, and who is there every day. But that’s no longer the case. We have to replace that human observation, human monitoring, with something. Technology is going to play a bigger and bigger role in crop protection,” said Soman.
He added that early detection technology will become more critical as farmers shift away more from reactive to proactive management.
“Being able to have that kind of early detection is a big potential part of the solution. Maybe even a step before that, which is keeping a close eye on the local microclimate and trying to predict if the conditions are just right for this kind of fungal outbreak, or this kind of insect to start growing here,” said Soman.
“Yes, tech is certainly part of the solution. It’s not the whole solution, for sure, but it definitely plays a role — especially in detecting diseases and insect pests early on. In large agricultural systems, where there are fewer and fewer people, there’s often not a lot of good data coming in. Whether it’s oil palm, corn, soybean, cotton — by the time a farmer realises there’s insect or fungal damage, it’s usually too late. So having a range of different solutions is really important.”
Famers acceptance of new technology is often cited as a major hurdle towards adoption. However, Tan has observed a willingness among farmers to embrace high-tech solutions.
“Farmers are very intelligent people. They know what is at stake with their crops and they will explore all opportunities to ensure they grow and provide the maximum productivity they can achieve. They do adopt the technology that is available to them in the marketplace.”
Data from CropLife Asia said 70% of farmers in Vietnam now employ drones on their farm via a service provider.
This has been aided by some governments, which have encouraged the adoption of technology like drones.
“A lot of governments have put certain mechanisms to help technology adoption at the farmer level. Thailand, for example, gave out a series of drones to help farmer just after COVID. In China, there were subsidies that got the cost down to a certain level to kickstart the process.”
From chemicals and biologicals to AI-driven insights and autonomous robots, the farmers crop protection toolbox is more diverse than ever before.
The challenge now is not just innovation, but scaling these solutions responsibly, ensuring that farmers everywhere, regardless of size or geography, can have access to the tools they need to protect their crops, their livelihoods, and the planet as they feed a growing population.
