PESTCIDE PRICES ON THE INCREASE

MASSIVE DEMAND for triazole fungicides in the USA and big increases in the cost of raw materials for glyphosate herbicide make price rises for UK growers inevitable, warns Dalgety’s national agchem products manager Peter Corbett.

Asian soya bean rust, for which there is no genetic resistance, endemic in Brazil, has recently been found in the USA. That has expanded the market for tebuconazole nearly 10-fold.

 “Last year, tebuconazole use in Brazil alone grew from 9m to over 100m. That’s the same as the total UK fungicide market.”

Quite what impact this will have on UK tebuconazole availability remains to seen. “We can’t buy any at the moment because it”s all going to America.” But he expects a price hike of about 8% for both epoxiconazole and tebuconazole.

With glyphosate, Mr Corbett anticipates an increase of 20% starting next month. That is mainly due to an 80% lift in the cost of yellow phosphorus in China as the country diverts limited energy resources into more profitable ventures.