Global Corporate Concentration in Pesticides: Agrochemicals Industry

In the times when world population is increasing while available farmland is decreasing, pesticides have become a necessity guaranteeing food production and enhanced productivity. However, through the years of pesticides use and the advancement in environmental and health sciences many adverse effects in human health and the environment have been revealed forcing for better regulation and control of pesticides marketing and use. This led to the adoption of continuously stricter legal frameworks regarding pesticides all around the world. The more stringent regulations and the demand of substances with environmental friendlier toxicological profile have led also to significant increase in cost and time of development of new compounds. Under the worldwide economic circumstances and the specific to the industry conditions pesticide companies are consolidating expanding to seeds market increasing concerns about the power concentration, the operation of the market and agri-food system. As a measure of corporate concentration in this article we proceed in calculating the concentration indexes of the top 3, 5, and 7 companies and the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index of the top 20 corporations of the sector. The results show the special attention that should be paid to future possible further corporate consolidations.