Time to Level-up Indian Agri-Exports

INDIA STANDS AT A pivotal juncture in agricultural trade.

- By Amit Kapoor & Ananya Khurana

To unlock the immense potential of its exports, it should no longer contemplate opening up to international trade, but how and when to do so without risking the sector’s domestic sensitivities. Up till now, India has maintained a conservative stance regarding the openness of its agriculture sector, driven by legitimate concerns about food security and negative externalities faced by smallholder farmers from global turmoil. This has inadvertently limited India's global agricultural footprint despite being a top producer of major agricultural commodities. For instance, India is the largest producer of milk, but its share in processed dairy exports like condensed milk, flavoured milk containing fruits or nuts, whey, butter and other dairy spreads, cheese, and curd is less than 0.05 per cent.

Furthermore, India has the world's largest population of cattle and livestock, yet its share in meat exports was a meagre 0.74 per cent as of April 2024, and growth has decelerated by eight per cent since last year. Similarly, even though India has a coastline of approximately 6,000 kilometres, its fisheries and marine exports capture a share of a little over one per cent of India's export basket and growth has decelerated by about 12 per cent since April 2023. Similarly, even though cereals constitute 2.8 per cent of India's exports, growth has decelerated by 8.5 per cent over the past year. There thus exists a paradox of plenty at the intersection of Indian agriculture and foreign trade as the country experiences high production but modest exports. This reiterates that India possesses an untapped potential for agricultural exports. A focussed strategy built around five essential pillars must be prioritised to boost India's agricultural exports, not just in terms of quantity but also quality.