Albaugh Sees Growth Ahead as Demand for Post-Patent Products Rises

Discussions about the primary players in the crop protection markets rarely include the Albaugh name, but as a global leader in post-patent crop protection, there is nothing generic about Albaugh’s success. The organization’s U.S. business is run from a three-story structure in Ankeny, IA, that feels more like an expanded farmhouse than it does a corporate office. That’s where we sat down with Willie Negroni, who was named Albaugh’s President, North America Region in October 2025, to talk about the 2026 year for U.S. farmers, Albaugh’s plans for growth, its strategy for the U.S. market, and more.

CropLife (CL): Let’s start with Albaugh – how is the business structured given all of the markets in which it participates?

Willie Negroni (WN): For North America, we’re set up in five distinct segments. Most people know us for our U.S. crop protection business. We also have a Canadian crop protection business, a seed treatment business, our specialty segment, which is golf course, landscape, nursery and aquatics, and we have an industrial segment. The industrial segment is some of our business-to-business activities. For example, we are direct importers of many products, and there are companies in the U.S. market that need those products but that may not be similarly backwards integrated from a supply chain standpoint, so they buy from us.

Our largest segment is the traditional U.S. crop protection business, and that’s really what started Albaugh back in 1979.

CL: How would you characterize 2026 for the industry?

WN: We came into a year that had real uncertainty in terms of what the farmer was going to get paid for traditional row crops. They were export challenged. Everything you read was that China wasn’t taking soybeans, and we were trying to find new areas to sell the corn from last year. The market out West has also been challenged in terms of commodity pricing – look at nut pricing, pricing challenges for apple growers up in the Pacific Northwest, and the vegetable farmers, too. There has just been a lot of pressure on farmer economics and a lot of uncertainty.

I think the (distribution) channel was undecided on which products they were going to stock for the year. There was hesitation bringing products into inventory. The retailers were focusing on just-in-time inventory until they realized they were going to have real opportunities this year, and that’s when the market really broke loose in late January. At that point, our customers said, “We need to get more product out to the market as fast as possible.”

In the meantime, you have this Iran war conflict that has changed input costs along the way, impacting all inputs on the chemistry side, along with freight and fuel, the equipment and parts, and all of the ancillary pieces needed to run the farm.

That impacted us, as well. We had some real price pressures, although some of that has subsided. We’re off the peak, but that peak happened in a critical period when we were just kicking off the season, and we’re still not back to pre-Iran war pricing for a lot of our products, or even freight and fuel.

Freight pricing remains very high. The price to get a container in the U.S. markets almost doubled.

CL: How has the market dealt with these cost pressures with so much uncertainty around where and for how much crops could be sold?

WN: Take a time machine back to pre-COVID when I was on the retail side with Wilbur-Ellis. You would set pricing in a market with a pricing intention letter. There might be one price change throughout a whole crop year, plus or minus 5%. Now there are price changes nearly every other month. The market has had to become much more accustomed to that variation. No one likes it, but it’s the current reality.

CL: Given these challenges, how helpful has it been for Albaugh to be diversified?

WN: We are diversified wherever possible, and we haven’t discussed the global aspect of Albaugh that’s really helped us diversify and allowed us to look at supply chain differently. The products that we formulate here in North America for a North American market may be different for what is formulated for, say, the China / Asia-Pacific region, which might be different from Europe, which might be different for Mexico, which might be different for Argentina or Brazil.

Having the global footprint gives us some variability in where we can source, and we can triangulate our best cost to produce or to import those products from different partners. One partner maybe makes sense for the U.S. market for a period of time, but then something may change and maybe our Brazilian partners are using a different supplier that might make more sense for U.S. in the future.

We are also multi-sourced for most of our crop protection active ingredients, if not all of them, including even our inerts and our intermediates. We have secondary suppliers for many of those.

The tariff era earlier this year, when you had tariff variability from day to day, month to month, tweet to tweet, really illustrated that we have to be multi-country. Being multi-source in one country is good, but we’re trying to get multi-country sourcing as well. That’s a little more complex and it’s easier to say than do, but that’s an aspiration to manage our business and help us control our costs for our customers.

CL: How has the transition gone from being on the retail side of the industry to this side? What have been the biggest learnings for you or what has surprised you the most?

WN: There’s definitely a learning curve involved when you compare buying an already-formulated product to buying the pieces for formulating and then packaging and shipping the product. The biggest piece is the supply chain. We’re buying each component, including packaging and labels and caps and all of the ancillary pieces, to have a product that’s shippable to our customers. How detailed that work is has definitely been the biggest surprise.

Retailers look at supply chain a little differently because they’re generally buying formulated products. They’re mainly forecasting by active ingredient, and they have optionality in who they buy from. If one vendor doesn’t have a product, you can turn to someone else and just worry about the last mile to the customer. By comparison, we’re bringing products in 45 to 90 days before we intend to ship them to a customer, so it’s a lot of planning and forecasting rigor.

CL: What information sources does Albaugh rely on to forecast as effectively as possible given the distance between you and the farmer customer?

WN: We try to get our forecasts as right as possible, but no one bats 1.000, right? We depend a lot on conversations and asking our customers the right questions. We also try to get out into the market with our customers to understand trends in the business.

CL: What is your perspective on the state of the crop protection market and business?

WN: The U.S. crop protection business has clearly become much more generic. There has not been as much innovation available to customers lately. It’s important to note that innovation is still happening, but much of it is being delayed because of regulatory challenges.

For example, we make post-patent products, but we’re trying to innovate through new formulations, product changes, active ingredient optimizations, and so forth, and getting anything through the EPA is difficult right now. The same is true for our competitors and the major R&D-focused manufacturers. That’s affecting innovation at the customer level because we can’t get those products into the customer’s hands. So, I’d say there’s a growing need among farmers for post-patent products. We see that demand clearly increasing.

I would also say the whole supply chain is more stabilized. There used to be a lot of excess inventory when money was cheap because the wholesalers and distribution carried more inventory thanks to low interest rates. That has really changed.

I see a lot of what we call destocking. No one wants excess inventory now. Everyone is working to clean up old inventory and minimize inventory carryover from year to year. This all gets back to how our distribution partners are waiting to the last minute, so they know what the farmers’ intentions are before they buy from us. I think that’s going to continue.

CL: So what does that destocking mean for a retailer or for a grower in terms of how they’re managing their business? How do they adapt to that reality?

WN: If you go down to the grower level, they’re going to have to forecast more than they ever have. Otherwise, they can’t always count on the retailer to have the products they need at the time they need them. Or, they’ll need to be flexible moving from one active or brand to another product. I definitely see that being a trend.

CL: To what degree is the market about the generic companies today?

WN: I think the majority of the business is generic. To put a number on it ….more than 80% of the active ingredients used have post-patent alternatives. There is some innovation, like I said earlier, around formulation improvements, higher-load type products, co-packing with a multi-active ingredient product, etc., and there’s more innovation with post-patent products than we’ve historically seen.

And many of the R&D-focused companies are still selling a lot of the active ingredients that are off patent because they have formulation assets and/or they’re backwards integrated to formulate the active so they stay in it for longer.

CL: I imagine you don’t want to win on price, which has historically been a key part of generic manufacturer’s offering, so what is the value that Albaugh strives to bring to the market whether it’s selling to the retailers or when growers are requesting your products?

WN: From an Albaugh perspective, it’s important for our customers to know that we are a U.S.-based company. We have U.S.-based formulation assets, so products are formulated here for the needs of the North American farmer. I think there’s a lot of value in that. Second, we feel we have great quality products. We thoroughly test them both in the lab and in the field, and we warranty our products.

In terms of the retailers, when you look at our business, you see that we are distribution focused. We don’t have a mixed strategy where we’re going direct to farmers. Many of our competitors have a mixed strategy. We are very disciplined in how we go to market through distribution partners. I think that is a tremendous value from a retail or distribution partner perspective.

CL: Where do you see growth opportunities in North America for Albaugh?

WN: If we can optimize our production system, we can gain in all of the business segments that I described earlier. But we see a big opportunity in our specialty segment right now. So, I look at what we’re doing in the golf course, landscape, nursery, aquatics, and forestry business. We’ve got some great opportunities to add some products to that business right now. We’re looking at labels and formulations that would have great value for that segment. We’re investing a lot of time and energy there.

CL: Why has the company never gotten into fertilizer?

WN: That’s a great question. I’ve actually had a lot of folks since I’ve been here send us opportunities to consider in that segment, and I think our decision goes to intentionality. We know what we’re good at. You start adding outside of your core business and it really dilutes what you’re good at. But, also, the fertilizer business is a pretty crowded market. What can we bring that’s unique to that market? If the answer is minimal, then is there really a reason to jump into it?

CL: The company mentions on its website that Albaugh is “the largest privately held supplier of crop protection products in the world.” What are the advantages and/or disadvantages there?

WN: The advantage is the global piece. For me in North America, I get to leverage our assets across the globe to help me manage a better business in North America. A disadvantage of us being privately held is that people don’t see us on the ranking lists of suppliers because people don’t know how big we are, so some opportunities don’t come our way.

But that’s the nature of our ownership. We don’t think of ourselves as a big, global company, and we don’t act like one. We’re a very fiscally responsible organization and we’re very lean. Most of our employees wear multiple hats, and even my direct reports are responsible for doing work – they don’t just direct others. And I think that really speaks to Dennis Albaugh’s entrepreneurial spirit that permeates these walls.

CL: What about 2027 – 2029? What do you see coming for the market?

WN: We’ve got some changes coming for some of the row crop herbicide selections with pyroxasulfone coming off patent. Pyraxol™ SC is a great product, so that is going to change some of the market. You look at products that are used at quarts per acre or pints per acre, and then you go to a product that’s used in ounces per acre. That’s really going to change the overall volume of product out there in the marketplace, as well as the grower selection. It’s a lot easier to use products that are only ounces an acre than pints or quarts per acre. So, I see that as a change in 2027 and beyond that will have major impacts.

But, as I look forward, the American farmer is very resilient. They always survive and figure out ways to do things differently, faster. We started this crop season with depressed pricing and the pricing has improved some, thankfully. So, I think farmers are going to be in a much better financial position than we originally thought as we started the year.

Farmers farm, and they want to have quality crops to market. They have to. They just can’t afford to have low-quality crops, so they will invest in their crops, and they’ll buy the crop protection products they need.

I’m more optimistic than I am pessimistic about the future. If the farmer is innovating, the farmer is making money, they’re going to continue to farm, they’re going to continue to invest, and that’s good for our business.

CL: What about the declining number of farmers? How great a concern is that for you?

WN: There’s definitely consolidation at the farmer level. We watch the demographic statistics around the farmer and the age of the farmer. But, so much of that consolidation is about scale. Buying a tractor has become so expensive. The major harvest combines seem to cost $1 million. The farmers have to have scale. The farmers who are going to survive are getting bigger. And they’re farming to scale, whatever that means because it’s different for every crop.

What does that do to our business? First, we’re making sure we’re working with distribution partners that compete and that can work with major farming segments. As we’re meeting with our retail partners to make sure we have the products needed by the growers that are getting larger, we’re also making sure we’re selecting distribution partners that are going after the farmers in that segment. And we feel we are.

CL: When you think about the farmers buying crop protection products most effectively or most intelligently, what do they do better or differently than those who don’t?

WN: It’s all about return on investment. When you look at the products that you’re going to use next year, you have to sit down and look at the cost for each product and your estimated return on investment.

If you’re making a selection between two suppliers and one is cheaper, then that product will probably have a better return on investment as long as it delivers the same quality. So, it’s about making sure they understand the ROI for every product they’re using on their farm because the most expensive product you can put on your farm is the one that doesn’t work or doesn’t work to your expectations.

CL: Same question, but for retailers. What do the retailers who manage the crop protection portion of their business most effectively do to deliver that success?

WN: I think that the retailers that have optionality for farmers will find more success. Farmers like optionality. What I mean by that is, they have the flagship or the original product that the growers have confidence in, but the retailer also has post-patent alternatives. That enables growers who want to buy down the brand ladder to do that. Offering that choice to farmers is critical, especially given current farm economics. Some of them will stay with the product that they’re used to using – and that’s understandable. But where farmers want optionality, retailers also need to have optionality to succeed today.

CL: If you had a piece of advice for the retailers for 2027, what would you tell them?

WN: Pick your partners wisely. Again, this is part of the Albaugh value proposition, but we’re channel focused. Our distribution partners know that we are not going to go around them and sell their customers while also trying to sell them. And I think that’s important because that is not how all of the companies in our space currently act today.

Executive Perspectives is an editorial series in which CropLife visits with leaders from across the industry to learn the challenges they see facing growers from their respective part of the business and their recommendations to help retailers succeed. This interview has been edited for style, length, and clarity.