Agricultural trade and environment nexus- A case study of rice exports from India

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In recent years there is discussion regarding nexus between agricultural trade and environment and shared responsibility in addressing trade related environmental externalities. In the current study, this nexus is examined focusing on rice exports from India in the recent decade. India’s share in quantity of world rice exports was 22.45 per cent on an average in the decade 2010-2019. However, in the same period India’s share in water footprint of world rice exports was 28.29 per cent. Further average economic productivity of water in rice exports was 0.24 and 0.22 USD/ M3 in the case of World and India, respectively. The estimated methane emission associated with Indian rice exports ranged between 2.42 to 11.31 per cent of total methane emission from rice production. Totally, 47 countries were involved as top 5 destinations of different types of rice exports from India. Land scarcity, water scarcity, water availability for agriculture, agricultural trade policies in these countries were the underlying factors of the observed rice export pattern of India. Out of these 47 trade partners, in 27 countries, methane emission intensity in paddy was higher than that of India in 2017, but paddy area was lower compared to India. Several national level and international level policy options are available for handling the environmental externalities associated with rice exports from India.