Leading companies worldwide based on pesticide sales 2021

In 2021, Syngenta was ranked as the world's leading crop protection company based on revenue, generating some 13.3 billion U.S. dollars in pesticide sales. Second in the ranking was Bayer CropScience, a subgroup of Bayer AG, with pesticide sales amounting to 11.4 billion U.S. dollars. In 2021, the total revenue of Bayer CropScience, including seed and pesticide sales, amounted to over 20 billion euros.

Global consumption of pesticides

Pesticides are substances used in agriculture to control the appearance of pests or regulate plant growth. The consumption volume of pesticides has grown significantly during the last three decades, reaching 4.19 billion metric tons in 2019. This translates into 2.69 kilograms of pesticides per hectare of cropland worldwide, a figure that has remained stable during the last decade.

Regional distribution

Asia-Pacific is the region that consumes by far the most pesticides worldwide with over half of the global consumption in 2019. China alone consumed a total of 1.76 billion metric tons of agricultural pesticides in that year, more than 40 percent of the global consumption. Asia and America were the regions with the highest pesticide consumption per area of cropland with roughly 3.7 kilograms per hectare.