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India’s exports of agricultural produce

Report by Nidhi Arora and Ishaan Kaila

APEDA stands for Agricultural and Processed Foods Export Development Authority. It is the nodal organisation that tries to promote exports of Indian agricultural produce and processed foods.

According to the year end report released by APEDA and the data downloaded from the portal, the main points of India’s exports in 2020-21 and 2021-22 up to October are:

Most of India’s exports are in non-processed foods. This category of export is typically low margin. Processed Foods tend to bring more profits.

The exports of non Basmati rice have grown a lot – it was 14,364 crores in 2019-20 and more than doubled to 35,476 crores in 2020-21. In 2021-22, up to October, 25,581 crores has been already exported.

Basmati rice, however, has been dropping consistently. It was 31,025 crores in 2019-20, then dropped to 29,850 crores in 2020-21, and is only 13,732 crores in the 6 months of 2021-22.

Processed Meat also has dropped drastically. It was 14.7 crores in 2019-20, dropped to 11.92 crores last year, and is at 6.67 crores for the half year of current year.

Processed vegetables grew from 2,760 crores in 2019-20 to 3,719 crores in 2020-21 – a 35% Year on year (Y-o-Y) increase.

Where the rise in a product’s value exported is more than the rise in the quantity exported, we can assume that this is on account of higher prices per kg/ quintal.

The products that showed this trend for two years in a row are:

Groundnuts

Natural Honey

Mango Pulp

Poultry products

Sheep/goat meat

Casein

Albumin

Other Meats

Cardanol

Products that showed a price rise in 2021-22 over 2020-21

This list is based on projected numbers for 2021-22. The projections are based on half yearly exports.

Wheat

Maize

Fresh Onions

Guargum

Jaggery/ confectionary

Alcoholic beverages

Fruit and vegetable seeds

Animal Casings

Walnuts

Processed meats

Cashewnut Shell Liquid

Overall, agricultural exports gres 128% last year (by value) and are projected to grow 127% this year.

By quantity exported, the growth was 176% last year and is likely to be 142% this year.