Agricultural chemicals, cost

United States has a total value of about 15,000,000. In 1948, 35,000,000 pounds were produced of one insecticide alone—DDT (9). There are about 25,000 plant diseases in the United States, including 10,000 of economic importance, and these cost the nation about 4,000,000,000 a year. The annual wholesale value of all agricultural chemicals in the United States is about 185,000,000. The Bureau of Chemistry of the State Department of Agriculture in California reported during the fiscal year 1946-47 the registration of 7717 economic poisons. 

The use of agricultural chemicals makes possible higher yields and food products of higher quality and contributes more than any one other factor to lower production costs. At the same time the farm has been made a virtual factory in a rural setting. 

Under this law pesticides already on the market are currently undergoing extensive scrutiny with regard to their testing especially with respect to carcinogenicity. Also being debated is the cost of disposal of existing agricultural chemicals which have been banned. 

Engineer insect and pest resistance into plants, thus not only reducing the cost for chemical control applications, but also alleviating the environmental problems related to agricultural chemicals. 

As a result of modern agricultural technology and farmer trial and error, great progress has been made toward the development of systems that provide long-term sustainability with reasonable use of agricultural chemicals. Farmers are concerned about weed control, weather, soil conditions, crop yield, and environmental stewardship. Alternatives to herbicides often come with costs or tradeoffs, such as increased soil erosion, lowered operational efficiency, more land needed, or reduced profits. 

Cost of commercial agricultural chemical and number of compounds screened... 

A major trend in industrial chemistry has been an emphasis on improved processes for the production of major chemicals such as ethylene, propylene, vinyl chloride, styrene, alkylene oxides, methanol, terephthalates, and so on. The necessity for higher efficiency, lower cost processes has been accentuated by the relatively slow growth rates of major industrial chemicals over the past two decades or so. The fertilizer portion of the agricultural chemicals market as described in Table 2.6 is an example of the slow growth. 

There are many segments a successful agricultural chemical company must address from the discovery stage to commercialization. Each segment contains its own variability and constraints. The journey to launch a cost effective agrochemical product that can satisfy the needs of farmers, industry and our environment is only successful if it results in profit for the shareholders. However, it is comforting to know that most of the companies like ours are focused on a win-win outcome for all. 

Amid the flush of discovery of new chemical structm es with growth activity, two other developments can be expected to influence this new technology strongly. First, much of value remains to be learned in the new uses of old agricultural chemicals. There is no more dramatic example of this than the success of certain herbicides and their derivatives in cane sugar enhancement. New discoveries can be expected from experimentation with growth-active substances in non-standard apphcations with other crops and with unconventional doses and timing. Modest improvements in crop performance, if consistent, can be quite valuable with compounds whose development costs have, in essence, already been paid. 

These results illustrated the capability of the Chemical Complex and Cogeneration Analysis System to select an optimum configuration of plants in an agricultural chemical complex and incorporate economic, environmental, and sustainable costs. With this System, engineers have a new capability to consider projects in depths significantly beyond current capabilities to... 

---