Brazil’s Cotton Pesticide Spending Hits Record R$8.2 Billion as Treatment Costs Jump 21 Percent

30 October 2026, Cuiabá, BR: Brazilian cotton growers spent a record R$8.217 billion (about $1.478 billion) on crop protection products in the 2025/26 season, up 14 percent from R$7.19 billion a year earlier, according to a survey by agricultural research firm Kynetec released October 14, 2026, and still the most current verifiable figure for this market.

The growth was driven less by farmers treating more land than by farmers paying considerably more each time they sprayed. The average number of treatments per property rose 13 percent, from 95 to 107, while the average cost per treatment jumped 21 percent, from R$3,472 to R$4,209. The potential treated area, a measure that counts land sprayed more than once each time it is treated, rose 6 percent, from 196.31 million to 209.07 million hectares, even as Brazil’s physical cotton area is estimated at only 1.952 million hectares. In dollar terms the market grew a more modest 10 percent, from $1.341 billion to $1.478 billion, a gap the survey attributes mainly to exchange-rate movements rather than to any difference in underlying demand.

Kynetec’s figures come from in-person interviews with growers on nearly 270 properties, covering 97 percent of Brazil’s cotton-growing area. Insecticides remained the largest category by far.

Within insecticides, boll weevil control alone accounted for roughly R$2 billion, with growers averaging 18 treatments per property against the pest, while products targeting caterpillars reached R$928 million, up 17 percent. Fungicides were the fastest-growing major segment, up 23 percent, linked partly to growers shifting toward higher-value disease-control products rather than simply applying more of the same chemistry. Herbicides grew the slowest of the three main categories, at 6.3 percent.

The spending increase came even as cotton’s planted area contracted in Mato Grosso, Brazil’s dominant cotton-producing state, where the area fell 8 percent, from 1.502 million to 1.376 million hectares. That combination, a smaller planted base but sharply higher per-treatment cost, points to pest and disease pressure, or at minimum growers’ willingness to pay for more effective and more expensive products, as the main force behind the record spending rather than simple acreage expansion.

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