Ag Chem Price Inflation Report 2018-19

Detailed analysis of YAGRO Ag Chem price database shows a 0.5% decrease in real farm paid prices 2018-19. This compares to the 0.2% fall stated in the AF index.

Yet these average figures do not reveal the dynamic nature of the underlying market. Over the 1’500 products analysed, we find that the figure only truly reflects 5% of the portfolio – while the rest saw material increases or decreases in price.

Highlighted examples:

• -10%: Liberator (Bayer CropScience Herbicide: diflufenican & flufenacet)

  • Black grass stalwart Liberator has seen a sharp drop in pricing over two years

• FLAT: Proline 275 (Bayer CropScience Fungicide: prothioconazole)

  • The autumn fungicide has held price despite turbulence in OSR cropping areas across the UK

• +6%: Amistar Opti (Syngenta Fungicide: azoxystrobin & chlorothalonil)

  • The cereals fungicide has made a strong gain in farm-gate price, despite containing two highly competed off-patent active ingredients

• Volatile: Rodeo (Monsanto UK Herbicide: glyphosate)

  • Rodeo has seen sharp volatility over the period, rising 16% 2017-18, and falling back 1% over 2018-19. This parallels perfectly with the global fuel markets – showing that glyphosate is a rare example chemistry behaving as a competitive commodity

Understanding these moves across 1’500 products is not an easy job. However: the dynamics of the market show how significant cost reduction opportunities might exist, even where average inflation is flat. Accurate product understanding and selection is critical – as is direct control of your purchasing, so you can pick and choose to follow the opportunities.

Take azoxystrobin for example: the average inflation for straight 250g/l azoxystrobin brands was -4%. However, individual products moved from +29% (Tazer) to -13% (Chamane), while the incumbent Amistar moved only -5%. Looking only at individual products hides opportunity.

YAGRO Price Check helps farms to analyse and significantly reduce agrochemical costs, through better buying and increased rebates. Thanks to our big data approach, you can access full transparency on price changes product by product - and find the big areas of opportunities in your cost base.

Look out for our next article where we detail how farms have gained year on year from our Price Check service, as reflected in their improving YAGRO Buying Scores.

Source: analysis of YAGRO Price Check data 2018-19