NEW DELHI, INDIA – Last week, in its monthly World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates Report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates India is expected to surpass China as the largest rice producing nation in the world this marketing year (MY2024/25).
Over the last nine years, India has experienced an unprecedented back-to-back record-breaking rice harvest. The recent U.S. International Trade Commission report, “Rice: Global Competitiveness and Impacts on Trade and the U.S. Industry” highlighted that over the last six marketing years (2019 – 2024), India’s production area increased by 3.4 million hectares (8.4 million acres), directly in response to the expansion of the Minimum Support Price (MSP), which is a price floor the Indian government sets for non-Basmati rice procurement, into states that were not previously significant rice producers.
In its report, USDA via its New Delhi Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) estimates that in MY2024/25, a record 50 million hectares (124 million acres) will be harvested. As a result, India has now surpassed China as the number one global producer of rice.
FAS/New Delhi’s most recent update estimates MY 2024/25 milled rice production at 147 million metric tons (MT). Given relatively firm domestic prices and higher government support prices for rough rice, this marketing year is also driving higher than normal harvested area increases for MY 2025/26. Though current forecasts show slightly lower than last year’s record planting FAS/New Delhi’s calculated normal area harvested is estimated at 47.6 million hectares based on the last five-year average planting. If fully realized, this would be the tenth consecutive year of production increases.
Meanwhile, FAS/Beijing estimates that despite China’s MY2024/25 harvested area being significantly lower than India’s, at just over 29 million hectares (71.7 million acres), their higher yields will allow them to produce an estimated 145.3 million MT of milled rice.
“Given the announcement of the United States pursuing a trade agreement with India, we are doubling down on our work with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to ensure that India’s most egregious policies and practices related to rice and their impacts on the world market do not go unaddressed,” said Peter Bachmann, President and CEO of USA Rice. “We’ve long called on the U.S. government to intervene and stop India from its market manipulative practices. The recent USITC Report and the FAS estimates are clear indicators that India will not stop its practices on its own.”
Bachmann said his industry has been blowing the whistle on India’s actions for more than a decade and has been forced to watch in real time as they ignored the WTO’s rules and grew to be gargantuan rice exporters overnight and now bypass China in production.
“U.S. rice farmers and exporters along with nearly every other rice producing country around the world is suffering at the hands of these artificially low prices set by India with no end in sight,” he said. “While we had hoped the reciprocal tariffs announced on April 2 would have helped curb these over-subsidized imports into our own market, we will need further action by the Trump Administration if we hope to see any change in India’s behavior or see a reduction in subsidized foreign rice entering the American market.”
USA Rice will continue working with USTR and the Trump Administration towards a solution that will not only benefit U.S. rice farmers but will hopefully support global rice prices to support all rice farmers maintain prices better aligned with market dynamics.
You can find a link to the USDA WASDE Report here.