A hedge against food price inflation that may be caused by domestic crop failures and global supply disruptions, the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration has been created to manage the strategic food inventory.

Cornering of global food supplies at the Chinese scale, however, impacts grain prices particularly to the disadvantage of poor countries. What about India, which has many more mouths to feed than China? India too maintains buffer stocks of rice and wheat as a shield against weather related crop setback triggering open market price inflation. But unlike China, entire Indian reserves of grains result from procurement of local crops by the federal agency FCI.

India's minimum buffer stock norms for rice and wheat are 13.5m tonnes and 27.6m tonnes, respectively. Generally, however, the stocks of rice and wheat on government account are in multiples of the minimum. For example, India held record rice stocks of 48.2m tonnes on September 1, 2025 when wheat stocks were also a high 33.3m tonnes. Explaining how it works in India, agriculture analyst Om Prakash Dhanuka says: "Essentiality of sufficiently large food reserves for a country with the world's largest population and where supply shortages in a bad crop year ignite inflationary pressure on food items will not be denied. Reserve grains kept in the silos and storehouses are all locally produced and there is no opacity in the operation of procurement and releases."

India is by far the world's largest exporter of long-grain aromatic basmati rice and non-basmati rice. The country's rice exports were approximately 21.5 tonnes, including 6.06m tonnes of basmati variety in 2024-25 following New Delhi's easing of trade restrictions in March 2024. Even while India is a rice surplus country with large volumes generally available for exports, it is required to import regularly some quantities of speciality rice from Thailand, Italy and Vietnam to satisfy specific demand. Such imports cost annually around $8m. While West Asian countries are principal destinations of Indian basmati rice, which has nearly 70% share of the global market, it has now a growing presence in North America and Europe. Besides India, Pakistan is the only other exporter of basmati rice. But exports from both countries are under growing stress because of the war between Iran and the US-Israel choking cargo deliveries and delaying payments by importers.

Aware of the mass discontent that arises from cereal price rises, New Delhi had to put a ban on wheat exports in May 2022, which was withdrawn after nearly four years in early 2026. The government came under pressure to suspend exports as the wheat crop during that period suffered a setback because of extreme dry weather. Quite an anti-climax for a country that ranks as the world's second largest producer of the cereal after China. After having recovered from the shock of short crops, New Delhi as of February 2026 sanctioned export of 2.5m tonnes of wheat and 500,000 tonnes of wheat products.

"In such a sensitive commodity, India cannot but be highly flexible in its export," says Dhanuka. But the government is unlikely to fiddle with wheat exports now as the country will by end-April harvest a bigger wheat crop than last year's 117.94m tonnes. The question is will the crop be 120.21m tonnes as the government has forecast or somewhat lower as feared by many trade officials because of unseasonal rains and the late February heat? What, however, is certain, the crop, now being harvested, will suffer in quality in some north Indian pockets. The principal markets for Indian wheat are countries in south and southeast Asia and West Asia.

In the meantime, besides good domestic crops and therefore, their low prices, and the tariff tensions with the US, thanks to President Trump's poor understanding of benefits accruing from low free trade pivoted on low tariff, saw China's grain imports falling 10.8% to 140.56m tonnes in 2025. Soybean, the source of edible oils and animal feed, imports, however, hit a record 112m tonnes, alone constituting 80% of Chinese grain imports. Driven by stable planting and some improvement in productivity, China marginally raised soybean production to approximately 21m tonnes. But production of this order falling way short of demand points to China's inevitable heavy dependence on imports for years to come.

Like it has done with iron ore, China is engaged in diversifying soybean import sources. In conscious efforts to rapidly cut its dependence on the US supplies of soybean, Chinese focus has shifted to South America with Brazil now accounting for over 70% imports. Beijing has friendly ties with Brasilia and this has helped China to remain Brazil's largest trade partner since 2009, much to Washington's discomfort. American farmers are distraught that their peers in Brazil have been able to whisk away an overwhelmingly big share of the Chinese soyabean market. But the fact remains that the price spread between the US and Brazilian soybean is highly in favour of the latter. The inevitable has, therefore, happened.

As for other grains, Chinese imports of wheat in 2025 fell 7.16m tonnes to 3.85m tonnes in which the share of Canada was 2.71m tonnes and of Australia nearly 1.02m tonnes. Myanmar, Thailand and India remain the principal suppliers of paddy and milled rice to China which raised imports of the commodity by 91% to 3.10m tonnes. The opposite happened with corn where record production caused a nearly 81% winding down of imports to nearly 2.65m tonnes in which the share of top supplier Brazil was 1.61m tonnes. Sorghum imports at 4.544m tonnes were down 47.51% with Australia and Argentina supplying 2.21m tonnes 1.53m tonnes, respectively.

From a belief that food security of developing and least developed countries requires of them to transfer agricultural expertise to destinations where it is acutely needed, both China and India are found active in the pursuit. The focus for both is Africa where the need is for technologies which will allow countries in that continent to grow food at least cost in an environment of low water availability and unfavourable weather. The farm inputs that China and India are providing to African nations include: drip irrigation, appropriate technology transfer and joint research and training programme with physical presence of experts from China and India. China in particular is sharing knowledge relating to making waste land into arable land with some African nations. "African nations growing food to their potential will bring about structural changes in global food trade," says Dhanuka.

India being a democracy unlike China, New Delhi has to look beyond providing security in food to the masses to meet the growing aspirations of the farming community. While agriculture and allied activities have a share of close to one-fifth of the country's national income, they account for over 46% of the workforce. The much trumpeted 'inclusive growth' is achievable if only the return from farming and allied activities such as livestock, fisheries and horticulture meets the expectation of producers. There may have been an all-round improvement in production over the years, but that is not enough to keep the community happy. The world was witness to the year-long historic protest by millions of farmers around New Delhi during 2020-21 for a fair deal, including guaranteed MSP.

Despite the continuing tensions between farming community and New Delhi and other shortcomings such as per capita operational holdings of the overwhelming majority of farmers at around one hectare, command area of irrigation being 55.8% of total cultivable land and limited supply of climate resilient HYV seeds, the sector has registered a decadal (FY2016-FY2025) growth of 4.45%. This performance is among the best in the world. An agriculture ministry official said, the horticulture sector with an approximately 33% share of farm GVA (gross value added) continues to make impressive growth in production and value addition. Horticulture production was up from 280.70m tonnes in 2013-14 to 370.74m tonnes in 2024-25, showing a decadal 30% rise in fruit output and 22% in vegetables.

Armed with this volume of production, it is expected that their exports, in spite of exacting sanitary and phytosanitary checks, will grow. The official admitted in view of India being the world's second largest producer of fruits and vegetables, 2024-25 income from their exports at $1,818.56m left a big scope for growth. However, besides fresh fruits and vegetables, India sells growing quantities of these items in processed form. The principal markets are West Asian and European countries. Fresh Indian fruits and vegetables have started gaining in acceptance in the US.