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Shrinking Pesticide Industry

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I just had an interesting chat with Tom Feldmann, National Sales Manager for
the Bonide Company.  I've worked with him on and off over the years
developing some of their problem-solving materials for garden centers.  He
tells me that the demise of Diazinon and Dursban is having major impact on
the pesticide industry.  He believes that about 50% of the folks previously
using those two popular products will NOT replace them with any other
pesticide.  They will use no pesticides.  Since those two products
represented almost half of the market, the total pesticide market is
shrinking rapidly.  Bonide is still doing well, but they are the only
company that is.  All the other consumer pesticide companies are apparently
in very big financial trouble.  Another indicator is that Home Depot and
Lowes have seriously cut back the number of pesticide products they will
carry.  They are selling only the "core" items; maybe a 20 to 30% reduction
in shelf space and a major reduction in the number of units for each product
at any one time.  If you want anything but the core products the independent
garden center will be the only place to go.
Tom observes that so many people are setting up their landscapes to be
minimum work or are having the work done by landscape companies.  The
commercial pesticide business is flat but not getting smaller.  Tom's sense
is many people are taking the approach when a plant is hit by an insect or
disease to simply replace the plant even if it is a tree or shrub.  He feels
that people are not buying as many unusual plants or plants that offer a
challenge to keep healthy in the landscape.  They go for the easy to care
for geraniums, impatiens, pansies type of plant.  He feels that the
explosion of the hanging basket market is a good example. Few bugs hit
hanging baskets.  If a bug does make a big hit, the basket is thrown away
and replaced.  Even the 32 ounce bottle of ready to use product is being
replaced with 16 ounce containers; people don't want so much at one time.
On the one side, the folks who are against any use of pesticides should be
delirious.  On the other side, one might become concerned that Americans are
losing interest in dealing with the challenge of keeping a plant healthy and
taking necessary steps to bring a sick  or stressed plant back to health.
One yet another hand, that makes three, the folks who usually used Diazinon
or Dursban may have been the types that blew everything away and sprayed
their entire property regularly and the folks caring for plants one by one
are still out there in the same numbers.  I sure don't know.
Another read on this development is that my prediction that more and more
pesticides will be sold directly by the manufacturer via the Internet will
come true in 3 to 5 years.  With independent garden centers having to sell a
broader selection of product including the gift market, they are not likely,
in my view, to make any more room on their shelves for pesticides than they
already have.  At the same time there are a fair number of new natural
pesticides that appear to be effective and much much safer.  Those folks
will have a tough time breaking into any national retail marketplace, so the
Internet seems a likely option for them to build their market; slower but
maybe very steady over time.
Interesting stuff, at least to us insect and disease geeks.

Jeff Ball

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