It's time to better understand the agricultural biologicals market

Biologicals have moved into the big groups' core plans, but it's still a hard market for independent makers.

We've found a lot of interesting signals. For example, BASF closed its purchase of AgBiTech, a biological insect control company with a strong position in Brazil, in March 2026. In December 2025, the European Commission proposed faster approvals for biocontrol products, including provisional authorisations by member states. And in January 2026, Bioceres lost Pro Farm, its US and European biologicals business, to creditors in a foreclosure auction. The big groups and regulators want more biologicals, but a standalone company still needs deep pockets to get through registrations and slow farmer adoption.

In this section, we look at why the big groups are buying rather than building, what Europe's proposal could change for approvals, and what this means for independent biological companies.

Farmers are losing chemical tools to bans and resistance, and food buyers want fewer residues. Biologicals can help, but they ask more of the farmer.

We compare six kinds of biological companies, from microbial crop protection and biostimulants to biofertilizers, seed treatments, pheromones and beneficial insects. Their buyers range from row-crop farmers and greenhouse growers to distributors, cooperatives and food companies. Then we rank what hurts most, like results that change from one field to the next, short shelf life, and long registration times.

This shows which problems farmers will pay a biological to fix, and which ones still send them back to a chemical.

Product sales through distributors, licensing deals with big crop protection groups, contract manufacturing, and bundles with seeds or fertilizers: biological companies make money in several ways.

We compare who pays and what it costs. A company pays for strain research, field trials in many regions and registration in each country before it sells much. Distributors take a large share, and they often push the products that pay them most. Licensing a product to a big group brings cash sooner but caps the upside. Selling directly keeps more margin, but reaching farmers is expensive.

You'll see which models cover their costs once trials and registrations are paid for, and which ones only work if a big group buys the company.

Biologicals won't grow just because chemicals get banned. Here, we lay out what actually pushes farmers to buy them.

Some drivers are easy to see: chemicals leaving the market, pests that resist them, and food buyers asking for fewer residues. Others reinforce each other. Each season of field data makes the next sale easier. Big groups that buy biological companies put the products in front of more farmers through their sales teams. And growers who use one biological well are more likely to try a second.

Before building or investing, you should know what makes a farmer trust a living product enough to use it across the whole farm, not just on a test strip.

Novonesis and Syngenta Biologicals come up first when people talk about biologicals, but they cover only part of the market.

Many interesting companies stay out of the spotlight. Some breed mites and wasps for greenhouse growers. Others make pheromone dispensers for orchards and vineyards, ferment microbes for seed treatments in Brazil, or sell seaweed extracts through local distributors.

They're hard to compare because a product's results depend on the crop, the soil and the weather. Many also sell under a distributor's brand or license their strains to a larger group, so farmers never see their name.

Below, you'll find the market grids and ecosystem maps we've built to show who makes what, who sells it to farmers, and where new players are getting in.

Koppert, BioFirst, Andermatt… a few biological companies have built real businesses, though in very different ways.

Koppert built its business on beneficial insects and bumblebees for greenhouse growers. BioFirst grew by bringing Biobest's insects together with Biotrop's microbial products in Brazil. Andermatt, a Swiss company, made its name with virus-based products against insect pests. Each found a niche it could serve well, but none has shown a model that works for every crop.

We'll look at how these companies picked their first crops, earned growers' trust season after season, and only then moved into new regions.