Levers for regenerative agriculture (1/2) | Biostimulants

Ternel’s key takeaways

With over one million insect species at risk of extinction in the short term and more than half of the French soils that are degraded, the agricultural sector plays a crucial role in preserving and enhancing biodiversity while mitigating climate change.
The growing awareness of the impacts of conventional agriculture on the environment as well as its own vulnerability to environmental changes drive the need to rethink farming practices. At the crossroad between science and sustainability, biostimulants are emerging as key enablers in the shift toward a more sustainable agricultural model.
The biostimulants market is on a rapid growth trajectory, expected to more than double by 2032. While Europe still holds a leading position, the momentum is shifting as growth accelerates in new regions - driven by a dynamic M&A activity led by major agribusiness players.
At the same time, the market is becoming more structured around two dominant categories of biostimulants: non-microbial products - scalable, easy to formulate and widely used, and microbial products - fastest-growing segment offering tailored and innovative solutions. While entry barriers for microbial products may be higher, we believe they also offer the promising opportunities for differentiation and long-term value creation.
The biostimulant sector offers strong potential, but selectivity is key to ensuring we back solutions that are both innovative and easy to adopt. As an investor, we believe it is essential to rigorously assess key strategic questions to ensure the alignment between the investment opportunity and our investment thesis:
- To what extent does the product tackle the core agronomic and environmental challenges facing the sector?
- What is the adoption potential across the farming ecosystem?
- How resilient and capital-efficient is the business model for scaling up?
- What is the potential for strategic exits, particularly through M&A with major agro-industrial players? </aside>

We hope you’ll root yourself in this blooming field of opportunity! 🌿

Mapping deep-dive

<aside> Our Biostimulant mapping is out!

We are excited to share a curated (non-exhaustive) list of European startups dedicated to developing innovative biostimulant solutions.

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Source: Crunchbase, web research

💡 Focused categories

📍 European scope

Non-microbial solutions e.g. algae extracts, amino acids, phytohormones, mineral solutions, etc.
Microbial solutions e.g. bacteria, fungi, etc.

Fact & challenges

<aside> 🎢 Biostimulants, what are we talking about?

Biostimulants are biological solutions applied to plants or soils to stimulate their natural functions. Unlike fertilizers or pesticides, biostimulants do not act directly as nutrients or protective agents. Instead, they support plant development by improving:

Boosting nutrient uptake
Improving tolerance to abiotic stresses such as drought, extreme temperatures, or soil degradation
Enhancing the quality attributes of harvests, including nutritional value, taste, aroma, and shelf life
Increasing the availability of nutrients within the soil or rhizosphere </aside>

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💡 Biostimulants are a key levers to the agricultural transition

Biostimulants offer multiple and complementary co-benefits.

Their use reduces the need for synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, thereby lowering the pressure on biodiversity and mitigating impact on climate change. But biostimulants also contribute to enhance soil fertility and quality and strengthen crop resilience to both biotic and abiotic stress.

Biostimulants thus emerge as a promising yet still underutilized solution, capable of transforming agricultural practices by aligning agronomic performance with environmental sustainability.

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Biostimulants fall under the broader category of biosolutions, which also include biocontrol products. The latter is not included in this article.

<aside> <img src="/icons/pentagon-three-fifths_pink.svg" alt="/icons/pentagon-three-fifths_pink.svg" width="40px" /> Land use, climate change and various forms of pollutions are 3 of the 5 key pressures on the biodiversity identified by the IPBES

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<aside> <img src="/icons/corn_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/corn_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> 157 million of hectares (38% of the EU surface) were dedicated to agriculture in the EU (1) in 2020, of which 10.5% (2) were organic farming areas

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<aside> <img src="/icons/sponge_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/sponge_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> 9.8 million tonnes of mineral fertilizers (N, P) were used in agriculture across the EU (albeit decreasing since 2017) in 2022 (4)

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<aside> <img src="/icons/temperature-warm_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/temperature-warm_yellow.svg" width="40px" /> Emissions from agriculture accounted for 12% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions (3)

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<aside> <img src="/icons/mushroom_brown.svg" alt="/icons/mushroom_brown.svg" width="40px" /> 52% of the soils show moderate to high degradation in France (3) (73% of arable soils)

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<aside> <img src="/icons/feather_green.svg" alt="/icons/feather_green.svg" width="40px" /> Common farmlands birds declined by 40% between 1990 and 2022 in the EU (5)

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<aside> <img src="/icons/bee_green.svg" alt="/icons/bee_green.svg" width="40px" /> Over 1 million of insect species are threatened of extinction in the short term (6)

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Focus | Challenges facing agriculture

Find out more about…

Market overview

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Barriers to overcome

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Technologies overview

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