India’s agricultural export journey in 2025 is a compelling narrative of grit, strategic thinking, and quiet transformation. Once deemed vulnerable to global protectionism, Indian farmers and exporters have delivered a remarkable performance—outpacing the country’s total export growth and thriving even as the US, a key market, raised its walls with steep tariffs.
The fiscal year opened with cautious optimism. Yet by September, numbers told a different story—India’s farm exports for April-September 2025 surged by 8.8%, hitting $25.9 billion, compared to the same period in the previous year. Total merchandise exports, by contrast, struggled with headwinds, eking out a modest 2.9% gain.
What explains this agriculture outperformance? At the heart lies a series of lucky breaks—two consecutive good monsoons, bulging government grain stocks, and, crucially, a timely reversal of export curbs that had previously held back non-basmati rice. As walls fell, Indian rice looked outward, quickly reclaiming and surpassing lost ground in the world market.
All eyes turned to the United States—always a top destination for Indian marine products and other agri-goods. Trump’s return to the White House brought a wave of tariffs, including a punishing 58% duty on Indian seafood. Observers braced for the worst.
But the storm didn’t drown Indian exports. Instead, exporters responded with remarkable agility: shipments destined for the US dipped marginally—down just 0.4%—but total marine product exports to the world soared by over half a billion dollars, thanks to keen diversification into China, Vietnam, Japan, Thailand, the EU, and Canada. Even as Washington’s stance hardened, Indian seafood found new tables, new fans.
Beyond rice and seafood, less-heralded sectors quietly shone. Indian coffee—riding a boom in global prices and shrinking global stockpiles—more than doubled its export value since 2019-20, heading towards the $2 billion mark for the current fiscal. Likewise, orchardists and processors alike benefited: exports of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables consistently climbed, reinforcing India’s reputation as a versatile agri powerhouse.
Yet the story is hardly one of linear success. The past decade has seen farm exports swing from $43.3 billion in 2013-14 to a slump of $32.8 billion in 2015-16, only to rebound to over $53 billion by 2022-23. The underlying pattern? International commodity price cycles: As the FAO Food Price Index slumped or soared, Indian exports followed—subject, to periodic export clampdowns by the Modi government when inflation at home threatened to rise.
The result is a sector that has become quietly adaptable. When the world price index cooled in 2025—down to nearly 126 points, well below its 2022 heights—some slowdown in export value followed. And as the Trump tariffs began to bite by September, Indian shipments of key goods like marine products, spices, and basmati rice to the US saw steep drops. But every dip bred a counter-strategy: Diversify markets, ramp up value addition, and push distinctive Made-in-India offerings abroad.
On the flip side, India’s import basket reveals shifting tastes—booming demand for vegetable oils, a drop in pulses imports after a bumper crop, and a voracious, US-driven hunger for imported fresh fruits and dry fruits. Notably, India—once a cotton exporter—now finds itself a cotton importer, a sign of both domestic market growth and new supply challenges.
What now? With the US rolling back tariffs on many agri-foods and a possible trade deal on the horizon, Indian exporters are bullish. Policymakers, for their part, have shown readiness to tweak tariffs, free flows, and support diversification—testing, adapting, and nudging the sector to ever greater heights.
This year, Indian agriculture has scripted a story not just of exports, but of resilience and reinvention. Against all odds—and despite the world’s walls—it’s a season of confidence for India’s farmers, traders, and the millions who build “brand India” on the global table.
