The business of weed control

Dear California weeders, I organized a symposium on the business of weed control at last week's WSSA meeting which contrasted the state of the agrochemical industry with engineering companies that are developing automated weed removal technology. I left the room excited and convinced that weed automation can and will have a significant effect on weed management in California crops. My notes follow below.

2018 Annual WSSA Meeting, Alexandria, VA

 Title: The State of the Weed Control Industry In 2018

 Organizer: Steve Fennimore

 The objective of this symposium is to appraise the current state of the weed control industry including agrochemical and automated technology sectors.

 The discovery, development and use of herbicides has been the focus of weed science for the past 60 years. The accomplishments of the agrochemical industry in development of scores of herbicide molecules as well as transgenic crops with engineered resistance to herbicides is remarkable reaching an estimated global value in 2016 of $27 billion. Despite increases in the value of herbicide sales, there has been a steady consolidation of the agrochemical industry throughout the decades; such that the industry is now is coalescing into four large companies. Motivation for this industry consolidation has primarily been to control costs and maintain profitability. The high cost of bringing new herbicides to the market and limited number of companies that can perform this task will likely continue to constrain the number of new products coming to the market. Countervailing factors working against the existing herbicide inventory are increasing number of herbicide resistant weeds that reduce product efficacy, and an increasing number of off-patent or “generic” herbicides that are marginally profitable for registrants. In an era with few new herbicides, where then must we look for new weed control tools? Many suggest that the key to preserving the efficacy of existing herbicides is to use less of them. However, if we must use less herbicide, then what technologies can be used to supplement weed management programs? Technology with potential to improve weed control may come from engineering companies, which are new to the weed control business. New weed control products include automated weeders that detect and spray or uproot weeds within the crop. The implications of these trends on the future of weed control business were explored in this symposium held Feb. 1, 2018 in Arlington, VA.

 Statements from the six speakers are presented in order:

 Introduction – Steve Fennimore, UC Davis

Discussion of weed removal automation has not caught the attention of the greater weed science community, and the goal of this symposium was to change that. In reality weed removal automation ranks with game changing technology like atrazine and engineered glyphosate tolerance in crops. Machines can recognize weeds and then use a weed killer tool to remove the weeds with herbicide spray or a mechanical device (flame, laser, hot oil etc.). Whether these machines achieve the level of market penetration like atrazine and glyphosate tolerant crops remains to be seen.

 Herbicides are much more expensive to develop with recent estimates of $286 million (McDougall 2016) compared to $10 to $12 million spent on development of the first automated weeders in Europe (L. Mol, & F. Poulsen personal communication) (Table 1). Herbicides are a fixed molecule that can be patented, but the molecule cannot be changed. Herbicides are highly regulated, and food tolerances must be established in the USA as well as in export market countries. Because of the high cost of registration of herbicides, registrants are dependent on major crops for profits. In contrast, low-acreage, high value specialty crops represent a disincentive to registrants due to risk of liability loss. Regulations of automated devices are much less expensive and less cumbersome than are herbicides. Automated weeder software can be updated routinely and where devices remove weeds, there are no food residues and no export restrictions. Protection of intellectual property of automated weeders is less than for herbicides due to the ease of working around patented machinery designs. Barriers for transfer of automated technology between crops is much less than for herbicides and for this reason automated technology is much more adaptable to niche specialty crops than are herbicides.

Table 1. Contrast of herbicides compared to weed automation tools.

 Current state of the agrochemical industry. Jonathon Shoham, a retired executive from Syngenta reviewed the worldwide herbicide market and prospects for new products. He described the state of the world herbicide market, which totals about $27 billion in sales as of 2016. Market drivers for herbicide discovery include innovation, economics (cost of mechanical and hand weeding), conservation tillage, biotechnology, weed resistance and precision agriculture. Generally, the trends have been towards less herbicide development, a maturing conservation tillage market and biotechnology market. Currently 10 herbicides are in development (Table 2).

 Table 2. herbicides in development

Dr. James MacDonald, of the USDA ERS reviewed the state of industry consolidation and described the current mergers that have recently taken place or are still in review: Bayer/Monsanto, Dow/DuPont, and Syngenta/ChemChina. Anti-trust reviews occur not just in the US and EU but in other major markets such as Australia, Brazil and Canada. Major competition issues that authorities focus on are 1. Will the merger lead to reduced competition and higher prices for seed and chemicals? 2. Will a merger lead to less research and innovation? A merger may lead to increased innovation if the merged organizations complement each other and increase the scale of R&D. Mergers can reduce innovation if the development of new products cannibalizes markets for existing products. Generally, public investment in R&D has fallen to 1970's levels while private R&D is of growing importance.

Evolution of the herbicide marketplace. Dr. Peter Porpiglia of Amvac reviewed the current state of the herbicide inventory. Herbicide discovery efforts were successful for a long time. The herbicide industry grew into a vibrant business with the discovery of twenty-eight commercial modes-of-action from the 1940s to the 1980s, but amazingly none since. The industry has remained successful relying on the discovery of chemistry with improved features within known modes-of-action, the development of value-added mixtures with other herbicides and safeners, new salts and formulations, manufacturing process improvements, and opportunities created with herbicide-resistant crops. Weed control is still the largest segment of the over $60 billion pesticide business, but the lack of proprietary protection for some of the most important technologies has forced a consolidation among the suppliers of proprietary products and led to the growth of generic companies. Today, it is difficult for any company to survive just with proprietary chemistry and most companies do not want to simply be the lowest cost supplier of post-patent chemistry. The distinction between proprietary and generic companies has become blurred with few companies relying fully on proprietary chemistry, and most relying to some extent on post-patent products with claims of added value. The business of chemical weed control has evolved to a search for sustainable solutions with mostly post-patent herbicides used in mixtures and planned sequences with other herbicides and systems including non-chemical weed management technologies.

New entrants into the weed management business. Engineering companies such as Blue River Technologies, AgMechtronix, Poulsen Engineering and others, are developing and selling commercial automated weeder machines. William Patzoldt of Blue River Technology and Ryan Herbon of AgMechtronix spoke about the development of their lettuce thinning and weed removal devices. Blue River Technology, now owned by John Deere, is developing its “See and Spray” technology to focus on broad acre crops like cotton in 2017 and soybean in 2018. This technology is able to recognize weeds in “milliseconds” at a travel speed of 6 to 8 mph.

Ryan Herbon of AgMechtronix introduced his company and its lettuce-thinning machine. His company is primarily focused on lettuce thinning, but is now developing a weeding machine that was tested in Yuma last fall and will be released commercially in the fall of 2018.

Balancing declining herbicide efficacy with new technology. David Mortensen, Penn State University spoke about “tipping points” in pest management. He addressed why some pest management techniques are adopted quickly while others are not. He defined “robust tactics” such as those that work consistently across a broad range of soil and climates. Examples are herbicides like atrazine and alachlor, transgenic herbicide resistant crops, and crop germplasm/herbicide products. For a new product to be adopted it will need to be a robust tactic, add value to the system and provide stability to the crop prod