Agriculture
India's farm exports hit $54 billion, but processed-food share slips
A 28-year look at trade data shows India selling to more countries, yet leaning more on bulk commodities than on higher-value processed products.
Desh Flash desk1 November 2026, 4:20 pm IST2 minUpdated 1 November 2026, 4:20 pm IST
India's agricultural exports have grown eight-fold since 1997 to $54.0 billion in 2025, but a new analysis of trade data shows the growth is increasingly driven by bulk commodities, while the share of processed food has slipped from its recent peak.
The study, by Dr Jadhav Chakradhar and Dr Arun Kumar Bairwa, covers 1997 to 2025. Imports rose even faster, from $2.1 billion to $36.2 billion, so the farm trade surplus stood at $17.8 billion in 2025, down from a peak of $24.2 billion in 2013.
The pace of growth has cooled markedly. Exports grew 19.4% a year between 2007 and 2013 but only 2.4% a year since. They fell in nine of the 28 years studied, including five of the six years from 2014 to 2019, so the path has become choppier as well as slower.
The long-run picture on value is better than it first looks. Processed food preparations rose from 4.3% of agricultural exports in 1997 to 15.1% in 2025, roughly tripling. Sugars and confectionery, fruit and vegetable preparations, meat and fish preparations, cereal preparations and dairy all gained share. Cereals (13.8% to 23%) and meat (3.3% to 9.2%) also grew, while fish and spices lost ground. Much of the apparent reshuffling reflects the fall of oilcake and fodder from 14.3% to 4.1%; oilcake is a by-product, not a processed good.
The worry is more recent. Processed food peaked at 20.1% of exports in 2022 and has since fallen to 15.1%. Its value dropped from $10.3 billion to $8.1 billion even as total exports hit a record, so this is not just a statistical effect of other categories growing faster.
The authors point to two forces. Export restrictions from May 2022 tilted the basket toward cereals, a large and politically sensitive category. The longer-lasting factor is destination: processed food makes up 18.5% of India's exports to rich countries but only 13.3% to others. As the fastest-growing buyers sit outside the rich-country group, the overall processed share is dragged down. The United States alone takes 16.6% of India's processed food exports.
For exporters and policymakers, the takeaway is that wider reach does not automatically mean higher value. With geopolitical shocks, from the Russia-Ukraine grain disruption to US tariff tensions affecting seafood, pushing sellers toward new markets, the next test is whether India can carry more processed, branded products into them. Read the original analysis here.
