As with many fields about which a company knows little, biopesticides seem a superficially attractive market to enter. From a distance and in the absence of most of the key facts and any experience, companies make three fundamental mistakes in their approach to biopesticides. The first is that companies believe, often without checking, the assertions and assumptions about biopesticides that commonly appear in print. Both the press and many learned reviews suggest that the public is crying out for pesticide-free food, that regulators are endlessly attacking, removing and tightening controls on chemicals. Companies think that they will make a biopesticide, any biopesticide, and regulators will co-operate with them in registration and the public will insist that farmers use it.
Companies tend to overestimate their own capabilities.
Or they may believe that they will carry out yet another screen for activity and select an isolate that is more active than all those hitherto known to science, develop an efficient production process, register and sell this 'better mousetrap'. Or they may believe that better biopesticides 'are only a matter of formulation' which is probably true enough in principle but extremely tricky to put into practice. Companies under budget in time and resources. Biopesticides are done on the cheap. This fact is usually hidden behind various items of corporate strategy jargon but biopesticides are virtually always done at the margin, with 'spare' resources.