India among top 10 agricultural produce exporters in 2019

A World Trade Organization (WTO) report on the trends in world agricultural trade in the past 25 years has found that India had a sizeable share in the global export of rice, cotton, soya beans and meat. It points out further that India had a 3.1% share in global agri exports and was the 9th largest agricultural exporter in the world. The European Union (16.1%), the US (13.8%), Brazil ( 7.8%), China (4%), Mexico (3.4%) were some of the other top performers in 2019.

In 2019, India (33%) overtook Thailand (20%) to emerge as the top rice exporter in the world. It was also the third-largest cotton exporter (7.6%), and the fourth-largest importer (10%) in 2019. However, with 3.8%, India’s share of foreign value-added content in its agri exports was pretty low. This was attributed to high tariffs on agri imports to protect the domestic market. “Despite the unprecedented global pandemic, India has been able to step in to meet the increased global demand, emerging as a significant global supplier of food and other essential agricultural products,” the Commerce & Industry Ministry commented.