The most striking part of the India-US trade deal is the opening of the door to large-scale agricultural imports—a reversal of a decades-long stance by successive Indian governments. US President Donald Trump has also bullied us into phasing out inexpensive Russian oil imports—even as China blithely increases its own.
How does the Modi government explain these compromises to its citizens? Evading the facts, trying to mask the truth with rhetoric and slander against the Opposition.
It’s true, as much as a “framework for an interim agreement” can be said to be true, that sectors like dairy, poultry, rice, wheat, cotton, maize and soybean have not been opened up. The main direct liberalisation has been in imports of US apples and tree nuts (e.g., almonds and walnuts)—too bad about farmers in Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir and Uttarakhand. But that claim hides as much as it reveals.
A backdoor to US agriculture imports has been opened in a way that is bad news for India’s maize, soybean and jowar farmers. And, if Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal is to be believed, India’s cotton growers as well. Not to forget the mention of unspecified “additional products” in the India-US joint statement. Judging from a hastily-edited White House Fact Sheet, Indian cultivators of dal may be next.
Why so? The announcement of duty-free (or concessional) imports of dried distillers’ grains with solubles (DDGS), soybean oil and red sorghum clears the way for large-scale imports of commodities that are either substitutes for or downstream products of maize, soybean and jowar. DDGS (a maize byproduct) and red sorghum are used for animal feed, which is currently in short supply in India. This may be good for poultry and livestock farmers, but unrestricted feed imports will reduce the market size for domestically-grown maize and jowar. Similarly, free-flowing soybean oil imports will damage the growth prospects of soybean farmers in states like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The likelihood of expanded dal imports is particularly grating. Certainly, dal imports aren’t new and have occurred periodically when there have been domestic shortages. But there is a difference between need-based imports of dal and opening up to sustained duty-free imports. Recall that PM Narendra Modi himself launched the ‘Mission for Atmanirbharta in Pulses’ as recently as 11 October 2025 with an outlay of Rs 11,440 crore focused on tur (arhar), masoor and urad dal. It would be bizarre to do an about-turn and open up the sector to large-scale US imports only four months later.
Also read: How the humble pulses became a big economic opportunity and shaped geopolitics
Catastrophic impact
Farmers are not going to take this lying down. According to the 2015-16 Agriculture Census, there are 1.7 crore maize farmers, 95 lakh soybean farmers and 70 lakh jowar farmers in India. Even if some overlap (since farmers produce more than one crop), this means that some 2 crore farmers—and by extension 10 crore people in farm households—could be affected. Not to forget another 98 lakh cotton growers in states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Telangana, or the 2 crore farmers the government proclaimed would benefit from the Atmanirbharta mission in pulses. This is a large body of voters in mostly BJP-run states. It is obviously why the Modi government has reacted so strongly to Opposition charges of a sellout in agriculture.
The middle class view of “pampered” farmers enjoying free electricity, subsidised fertiliser and minimum support prices plus tax-free incomes is far from the lived experience of most cultivators. Farmers face punishing price and income volatility in a way that few others do. Weather events destroy their crops, rising production depresses market prices and the absence of procurement means that minimum support prices for crops other than rice and wheat remain notional. A surge in lower-priced US imports from industrial-scale farms could be catastrophic.
And it’s not as if agriculture has been prospering. Close to half the population of the country depends on agriculture, whose average real gross value added (GVA) growth in the 2015-25 decade was 4.5 per cent. The growth rate in GVA from crops (as opposed to livestock, fishing or forestry) in that decade was only 2.8 per cent per year, down from 3 per cent the previous decade (2004-14).
In any industrialising economy, workers should be moving from low-paying, low-productivity jobs in agriculture to better paying work in manufacturing and services. Which is what happened between 2004-05 and 2018-19, when the share of agricultural workers in the workforce fell steadily from 59 per cent to 43 per cent, with the biggest drop occurring during the UPA. Since then, however, this trend has shifted, with the share of agricultural workers rising to 46 per cent in 2023-24. The fact that workers have shifted back to farm jobs is a testament to the failure of Make in India.
In an ideal world, consumers would benefit from trade openness and cheaper food imports. But when half of all consumers are trapped in a low-productivity agrarian economy, exposing them further to agricultural price volatility would be criminal. And it is the Opposition’s duty to put pressure on a wavering government to hold the line.
Amitabh Dubey is a Congress member. He tweets @dubeyamitabh. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)