Industry body CropLife India on Friday said the Draft Pesticides Management Bill, 2025 requires targeted changes to ensure Indian farmers get faster access to safer and more effective crop protection technologies.
In a submission to the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, it said Indian agriculture faces annual crop losses of 10 to 35% due to pests and diseases, translating into economic losses of over Rs 2 lakh crore. Yet farmers continue to depend heavily on molecules introduced three to four decades ago, even as climate variability, rising resistance and changing pest behaviour increase pressure on farm productivity, it said.
A central concern in the submission is that the current draft does not address the policy gap contributing to this innovation lag.
“When farmers remain dependent on older chemistries for too long, resistance builds faster, spray intensity rises, and it becomes harder to meet tightening residue expectations in domestic and export markets. Newer crop protection technologies are more targeted, lower-dose and better aligned to evolving pest pressures, yet their introduction in India is often delayed,” CropLife India chairman Ankur Aggarwal said .
The association has therefore proposed a limited, time-bound PRD (Protection of Regulatory Data) framework of about five years from first registration, which would create a more predictable pathway for newer solutions to reach farmers faster, while allowing competition through independent data generation. The logic has previously been examined by the Satwant Reddy Committee, reflected in the Pesticides Management Bill, 2008, and endorsed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Doubling Farmers’ Income, the company said in a statement,
Aggarwal said the government’s effort to modernise pesticide regulation is timely and welcome.
“The draft Bill takes several important steps in the right direction, including digitisation and stronger action against spurious products. But farmers today are dealing with more erratic pest pressures in the field, while exporters face tighter residue and SPS requirements in key markets such as the EU and UK,” he said.
The body also flagged the unchecked growth of online sale as one of the most serious emerging threats to genuine pesticides.
The association represents 17 R&D-driven crop science companies that account for around 70% of India’s crop protection market and are responsible for introducing nearly 95% of the molecules in the country.
