Biological pesticides represent a vast potential market, to substitute for chemicals increasingly targeted by environmental regulators, and include broadly microbe, protein and plant extract-based approaches, where proteins are the fastest growing today.

The sale of pesticides, to protect crops from insects, fungi and weeds, is a $79 billion global annual market, where biologicals have a 4% market share today, with 10% annual growth, according to data from S&P and Allied Market Research.

However, a more relevant indicator of direction of travel is the balance of annual new approved substances. In the EU, there have been no new chemical active substances approved since 2019 – see chart above.

Underlining this sea-change, the head of the EU’s pesticide unit, Klaus Berend, told the New Food Finance podcast that “biological solutions will dominate”.

At New Food Finance, we analyse how tech and other companies are creating solutions for an environmental transition in food production, for example to reduce greenhouse emissions, and air and water pollution, or restore biodiversity.

Chemical pesticides pose a clear environmental threat, for example in the case of non-selective insecticides which kill a broad range of invertebrates, as well as the target species.

Regulators are keen to promote biological alternatives, for example by stream-lining the otherwise labyrinthine process for pesticide approvals, or by banning existing chemical pesticides when less harmful alternatives emerge.

Our tech fund-raising database shows that producers of biological pesticides have raised $9.2 billion cumulatively, over the past decade. The database tags companies according to more than 1,000 technologies, including more than 50 in the biological pesticide space, allowing us to parse these further.

• We find that 110 companies globally are producing microbe-based biologicals, for example using bacteria, viruses, fungi and microalgae, and have raised $6.3 billion to date.

• Some 21 companies are producing protein-based pesticides, for example based around RNA, antibody-type technologies, peptides and other proteins, and have raised $1.5 billion to date.

• And some 42 companies are producing biologicals based on natural extracts of plants, as well as other natural substances such as pheromone-based solutions, and have raised $1.6 billion to date.

Analysis of speed of growth reveals two key findings:

First, protein-based biologicals are on a tear, with almost all investment since 2019. Producers of biologicals based on microbes and natural extracts have also grown strongly, but with a longer track record.

Second, all three categories have stand-out leaders. In the case of protein-based biologicals, Greenlight Biosciences and Vestaron alone have raised $870 million. On the microbe side, Ginkgo Bioworks has raised $4.2 billion. In natural extracts, Zymergen raised $976 million, before its acquisition by Ginkgo.

The future is undoubtedly bright for biological pesticides, where just now, proteins are shining brightest.