Herbicides, market-competitive

These high-profile conflicts reemphasize a question raised in Chapter 1. If in some places the public is struggling to ban chemical applications that the industry is fighting to maintain, is it demand or rather supply that drives the behaviors of lawn people, especially their application of insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, throughout the United States and Canada More fundamentally, are the risks outlined in Chapter 4 essential to this economy, or incidental to it, an unfortunate market inefficiency that wiU soon be fixed through more and better competition Can the industry produce alternatives How does it communicate and manage risk ... 

Sales of stereochemically pure herbicides were rising indicating that they give competitive market advantage over competitors still selling racemic products. 

Performance and market share for competitive herbicide products Since the USEPA Special Review was initiated in 1994, acres treated with various corn herbicides have been carefully monitored. No clear alternative has proved to be a possible replacement to atrazine. Several facts are noteworthy. No corn herbicide introduced between 1994 and 2000 reached a 10% market share, nor did the market share increase for putative atrazine replacements like 2,4-D or bromoxynil (Table 13.6). These new products suffered from one or more of the following limitations limited spectrum of weeds controlled, crop injury potential, or rotational restrictions. Meanwhile, atrazine s total market share remained constant at approximately 70%. To date market retention has been poor when new herbicides are used alone. Virtually all com herbicides introduced since 1994 are used with atrazine, and the percentage of acreage treated in combination with atrazine is increasing (Table 13.6). 

Wc cannot maintain our present high density of population in the developed world, nor deal with malnutrition in the developing world unless we preserve our food supply from attacks by insects and fungi and from competition by weeds. The world market for agrochemicals is over 10 000 000 000 per annum divided roughly equally between herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides,... 

However, the introduction of new herbicides, either from AHAS biochemistry or others such as HPPD inhibitors, ACC-ase inhibitors and others, shows that selective herbicides, sometimes together with safeners, will find their markets when they are competitive with older solutions and when they offer advantages to farmers, such as one application a season. 

Potential markets for bioproducts are wide-ranging, and include polymers, lubricants, solvents, adhesives, herbicides, and pharmaceuticals. While bioproducts have already penetrated most of these markets to some degree, new products and technologies are emerging with the potential to further enhance the performance, cost competitiveness, and market share. 

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