Crop Protection Product Sales Grew 6% in 2021 for Top U.S. Ag Retailers

In the annual race for revenue, the crop protection products category did just fine in 2021. According to this year’s CropLife 100 survey, the nation’s leading ag retailers saw their crop protection product sales grow a respectable 5.7%, up from $12.2 billion in 2020 to a record $12.9 billion.

If there was any negative in the growth rate, it was the fact that it paled in comparison with the overall marketplace (11%). Therefore, the crop protection products category did see its share of all crop inputs/services sales decline 2%, down from 39% in 2020 to 37% today.

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Strong Growth Everywhere

Looking more closely at the overall numbers for the crop protection products category, it’s easy to see why the segment managed to perform so well financially during the 2021 growing season. Each year, the fortunes for the category rest on how well the three product segments that make up crop protection — herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides — do with grower-customers. During 2021, all three did exceptionally well.

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For comparison’s sake, let’s take a look back at how these three segments performed in 2020. According to the 2020 CropLife 100 survey, all three crop protection product segments had more “up” performances than down. This ranged from 71% for herbicides, with respondents reporting growth between 1% and more than 5%, to insecticides, where 44% of respondents said growth topped 1% to more than 5%.

Fast forward to 2021, and the numbers were a lot stronger. For herbicides, 76% of respondents said this segment grew between 1% and more than 5%, a 4% improvement from 2020. In the fungicides segment, 75% of CropLife 100 ag retailers reported growth of between 1% and more than 5%, up 17% from the 2020 figure. For insecticides, 69% of respondents said growth for them in this segment was up between 1% and more than 5% for 2021 — an impressive 25% improvement over the 2020 percentage.

With such impressive growth numbers for the three crop protection product segments, the better news for the category was how few CropLife 100 ag retailers experienced declines. For example, according to the 2020 survey, between 1% to more than 5% sales drops were 16% for herbicides, 28% for fungicides, and 22% for insecticides.

But in 2021, however, these percentages all went down, ranging from 2% to 14%. For herbicides, the percentage of CropLife 100 ag retailers seeing between 1% and more than 5% sales declines was only 14%. For fungicides, it was also 14%. And for insecticides, only 13% of respondents saw revenue drops of between 1% and more than 5%.

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