Brazil's crop protection market is going through a wave of price erosion as off-patent generic manufacturers squeeze the largest suppliers, according to third-quarter 2026 earnings from six multinational agrochemical companies.
FMC Corporation showed the sharpest impact. Its revenue fell 80 per cent to $105.9 million from $542.2 million a year earlier, with a net loss of roughly $2.07 billion. About $175 million of its adjusted EBITDA hit came from price adjustments on stock held by distributors in Brazil, the United States, Canada and Argentina, on top of a separate $500 million impact from a new North American pricing model. Latin American sales fell to $264 million from $463 million. FMC said the Brazil adjustments cover only stock already with channel customers and do not change its current selling prices.
Syngenta Group said Brazilian pesticide sales fell 6 per cent and the rest of Latin America 14 per cent from January to September, blaming price pressure on off-patent products. ADAMA reported a $115 million net loss on revenue of $897 million, citing price pressure, farmers' liquidity constraints and off-patent competition. BASF's agricultural division posted a 19.7 per cent sales decline to about $1.57 billion, and linked it partly to sales pulled forward into the second quarter. UPL's pesticide division revenue fell 8 per cent, with weather disruptions and postponed sales in Brazil and other Latin American markets among the reasons.
Farmers' own decisions are part of the picture. Trade group CropLife Brasil said the area planted with uncertified soybean and cotton seed grew 210 per cent between 2021-22 and 2025-26. Uncertified soybean seed, home-saved or counterfeit, now covers 9.6 million hectares, about 20 per cent of the soy area.
The group said bioinput revenue fell 21.5 per cent to 107 million reais in the first half of 2026, even as the area treated with inoculants grew 38.6 per cent to 9.4 million hectares.
Regulators kept approving products through the slump. The agriculture ministry authorized 78 pesticide registrations, including technical equivalents, on 28 October, and published another act on 4 November covering 14 requests, among them microbiological fungicides, insecticides and nematicides and one pheromone-based product.
Photo: Marevarzeamt / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Global Agriculture
Comments
(0)