2026 Biologicals Survey: Making More Market Moves

It’s no secret that the biologicals category has come a long way over the past few years. According to most sources, global sales for the sector stood at approximately $17 billion as of the end of 2025. Furthermore, in the key U.S. agricultural marketplace, the data suggests that 2025 revenues for biologicals in agriculture hit more than $3.5 billion.

According to Greg Sanford, Vice President of Sales, Midwest, at Verdesian Life Sciences, this acceptance of biologicals among U.S. growers is being fueled by a fundamental desire that the entire agricultural industry shares — the quest for increased yields.

“We’re seeing two distinct mindsets from growers today,” says Sanford. “One is: ‘Markets are down and inputs are high, so we cut everything possible.’ The other is: ‘We are going to cut back in an area where input price remains high, but we continue to invest in proven tools that help protect or maintain yield.’ [Biologicals] tend to fit more naturally into that second approach.”

Ag retailers have also noted this increase in demand for biologicals. In fact, based upon information gathered in the 2025 CropLife 100 Survey of the nation’s top ag retailers, 56% of respondents saw their sales in this category grow between 1% and more than 5% during the 2025 growing season. And while this the rate of growth for biologicals was down a bit from 2024, it was still the highest percentage of positive growth among the four crop protection products segments (the other three being herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides).

Here at CropLife Magazine, we are interested in digging even deeper into the dynamics and statistics that are currently driving growth across the biologicals category in agriculture. For this reason, since 2018, we’ve annually polled our ag retail readers to learn more about what biologicals they are selling most often, which companies are the leaders in this field, and what more the industry can do to spur market growth. As always, the answers to these questions are not only enlightening, but sometimes surprising.

Biostimulants Still Reign

By most definitions, there are three main segments that make up the biologicals category in agriculture — biostimulants, biofertilizers, and biopesticides (which include biofungicides). Based upon the data from past CropLife biologicals surveys, biostimulants have been the leading segment among all the segments with ag retailers and their grower-customers since the category began becoming more mainstream, and this remains the case going into the 2026 growing season.

According to the 2026 survey, half (50%) of all biological products sold by ag retailers during the 2025 growing season fell into the biostimulants segment. In fact, since CropLife first started our Biologicals Survey back in 2018, biostimulants have continued to dominate overall market share for the category each and every year.

As for the other two segments, biofertilizers are second behind biostimulants in overall popularity among ag retailers and growers, with 32% of the products sold during the 2025 growing season fitting into this segment. This marked a slight 1% decline from the percentage of overall biological sales for the biofertilizers segment held during the 2024 growing season.

Biopesticides are a distant third place among all biological product segments. According to the 2026 survey, this segment held an 18% market share in 2025, a slight 1% improvement from the 2024 figure.

However, ag retailers tend to sell multiple types of biological products to their grower-customers.

Reflecting this fact, the 2026 CropLife Biologicals Survey asked respondents what kinds of biologicals they sold during the 2025 growing season. This question allowed respondents to choose all three biological product types, which a majority of them indicated was the case for their businesses (subtracting out the 15% that said their companies didn’t currently offer any biological products to customers).

Overall, the percentages in the 2026 survey were very positive. In terms of the three types of biological products sold among respondents, biostimulants remain the most common. According to the 2026 survey, 84% of respondents sell these products to their customers. Better still, this represented a 2% increase from the percentage of biostimulant sales ag retailers said they recorded during the previous growing season.

For the other two biologicals segments, the percentage news from the 2026 survey was more mixed. On the positive side, the biopesticides segment saw its overall percentage among ag retailers improve by 1% during 2025, increasing from 29% during the 2024 growing season to 30%. This marks the biopesticides segment’s highest percentage for sales among ag retailers since 2022, when the segment also achieved a 30% mark.

As for biofertilizers, the news this past year was a bit less positive (although it wasn’t negative either). According to the 2025 CropLife Biologicals Survey, biofertilizers products were sold by 54% of respondents. In the 2026 survey, ag retailers indicated this percentage for biofertilizer sales held steady.

The Bigs Stay Big

Initially when CropLife first started conducting its biologicals survey, start-ups were the market leaders in terms of sales volume. Over the past few years, however, the major players in the fertilizer and crop protection/seed categories have come to dominate the field, and this remains the case going into the 2026 growing season.

In terms of which our suppliers our respondents are getting their biological products from (another question that allowed respondents to choose multiple options), major crop protection product companies were by far the most popular suppliers. According to the 2026 survey, Corteva Agriscience continues to be the leader in the biological products field, being the source for 39% of respondents. BASF is in second place at 31%.

These were the only two biological companies to top 30% among respondents when it came to sourcing of products. The rest of the top 10 had percentages ranging from 17% to 26%.

Bayer Crop Science was the No. 3 company among biological products, said respondents, with 26% of them selling these brands. This marked a decline for the German agricultural giant since the percentage of ag retailers selling its biologicals according to the 2025 survey stood at 37%.

Syngenta was tied with Bayer at No. 3 among biological product suppliers, also holding a 26% share with respondents. Rounding out the top 5 biological products companies in the 2026 survey was BRANDT at 23%.

Finishing out the rest of top 10 biologicals companies, according to survey respondents, were Albaugh at No. 6, supplying products to 22% of respondents; WinField United ranked at No. 7, with 20%; AMVAC at No. 7 with 18%; and FMC Corp. and Koch tied at No. 9 with 17% apiece.

Product Trust Remains a Concern

While everyone agrees that the future for biological products in agriculture is looking brighter than ever before going into the 2026 growing season, there are still some significant hurdles for the industry to overcome. Foremost among these is trust.

For many years, biological critics have questioned whether or not these products perform as advertised when being applied to grower-customer crop fields. Trust remains the biggest obstacle to more widespread biological products’ adoption among ag retailers and their grower-customers.

According to this year’s survey results, 39% listed trust issues as the major reason biological products have had a hard time finding market acceptance. However, on a hopeful note, this did represent a 2% decline from the percentage of ag retailers that said trust in biologicals products was an issue for them in the 2025 CropLife Biologicals Survey.

In second place among barriers to biological products acceptance was cost. According to 19% of survey respondents, biological products are just “too expensive” compared with conventional agricultural products for grower-customers to use regularly. Still, this represented a 1% decline from the 2025 survey results.

Close behind this “biologicals are too expensive” criticism was the belief that “conventional products are better than biologicals in the field.” This was mentioned by 16% of respondents — a 2% increase from the 2025 survey data. The remaining 26% cited other reasons for the low biological product adoption rate among their customers. This included handling/storage concerns (11%), a fear of seller profit losses (11%), and regulatory issues (4%).

One other variable dogging biologicals is how these products are being utilized by growers. Early on, most biological purveyors envisioned biologicals as alternatives to conventional crop protection and crop nutrition products. However, now that we are several years into biologicals adoption, it seems as if most are still viewed as complementary options rather than stand-alone ones.

For evidence of this trend, consider this year’s findings. According to the 2026 CropLife Biologicals Survey — when asked how their grower-customers typically use biologicals — a whopping 98% said they were used as a supplement with conventional products. Only 2% of respondents said their grower-customers were using biologicals as stand-alone replacements for conventional products.

Perhaps in an acknowledgement of this trend, some biological suppliers have formulated their products with both biological and conventional components.

“What makes BioBoost a little bit different is that it combines basically all these technologies,” says Jason Schley, President of Agronomy at BW Fusion. “It combines a little bit of synthetic micronutrients, beneficial bacteria, endophytic fungi, and carbon. It also supplies amino acids, which are basically a building block to protein.”

More Growth Anticipated

For a category such as biologicals, the outlook is almost as important as the current state of things. In this respect, the overall future for the biological products category seems very positive.

According to the 2026 survey, 80% of respondents are planning to increase the number of biological products their companies sell to grower-customers during the coming year. This is down a little from the 2025 survey results, where 82% of respondents were planning such an increase in their biological product offerings for grower-customers.

Sixteen percent plan to maintain their current level of spending on biological products. The remaining 4% of survey respondents indicated their companies planned to decrease the amount they are currently spending on biological products for the 2026 growing season.

Survey Statistics 

The 2026 CropLife Magazine biologicals online survey was sent to readers in January 2026. In total, there were 90 surveys returned with valid answers. 

In terms of breakout, 86% of the respondents identified themselves as being ag retailers/cooperatives/crop consultants. Eight percent said that they were fertilizer producers and suppliers. The remaining 6% identified themselves as manufacturers and formulators. 

Region-wise, 43% of the respondents said their companies were located in the Midwest, 16% apiece were located in the Plains and the Northeast, 15% were in the West, and 10% were in the South. In terms of crops serviced (where multiple answers could be chosen), 97% of respondents dealt with corn, 82% with soybeans, and 62% with wheat. 

CropLife would like to thank everyone that took part in this year’s survey. Your insights are appreciated!