India is newly the rice production champ of the world in the 2024-25 fiscal year, overtaking China amid escalating groundwater crisis.
The subcontinent’s agriculture ministry announced on December 29 that annual rice output up to June 2025 was set to clock 149 million tonnes.
This projection echoes the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s 2024-25 production tally at 150 million tonnes.
China follows the USDA list with 145.28 million tonnes, which reflects a levelling off of the country’s perennial number one status.
Helping India along is robust minimum rice price which improved by about 70% in the 2015-25 decade, whetting cultivation interest.
With this ample rate, farmers not only feed a nation of 1.4 billion people but export an equivalent of 40% of global rice trade.
High production momentum made India the top rice exporter at 20 million tonnes (2024-25), according to a Reuters report of December 30, 2025.
Avinash Kishore of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute told the news agency that exporting “gives [India] a pivotal role in global trade.”
Groundwater a Hard Bargain
But there is a bubbling underground crisis that could turn into a serious challenge in future production and exports, namely water scarcity.
Northern states of Punjab and Haryana are not taking production prestige in their stride because of groundwater reduction there.
The two states depend more or less on borehole irrigation for their paddy but this resource is at an ebb.
Punjab Agricultural University and state government officials cite that drainage has forced borehole diggers to drill 80-200 feet to chase retreating water.
Drainage has gained pace since 2020, even occasioning bans for digging new boreholes in some severely affected regions.
Natural replenishment by aquifers has also been lagging behind the rate of extracting water from the ground. Each year, rice farmers from these two states tap 35-57% more groundwater than the renewal rate of aquifiers.
Production is therefore drifting to southern states like Telangana, which produced 18.9 million tonnes of rice in 2025, the second highest nationally.
Telangana depends on a combination of monsoon rainfall and groundwater to grow paddy, thus eradicating strain on water extraction.
This is unlike counterparts in the north where much of the 3,000 liters of water each kg of rice needs to thrive comes from boreholes.
To stopper this crucial water resource from dwindling further, Haryana has been offering 17,500 rupees ($194.60) as subsidy for growers to trial millet. Will this switch to other grains dent rice production in India from its current historical high? The following data section attempts an historical answer.
India Rice Production Statistics
For a long time, India has been the world’s second biggest rice production center after China. This changed in the 2024-25 season when India topped output at 150 million tonnes or 28% of the worldwide harvest, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Following suit was China at 145.28 million tonnes while Bangladesh (36.6 million tonnes) and Indonesia (34.1 million tonnes) clinched the top 4 spots.
India represents 40% of the world’s rice trade, apart from occasional years when it restricts exports of basmati. As a result of this high supply representation, the world’s 2025-26 rice stock was set to reach 556.4 million tonnes, above 2024-25’s. Ample production in India, Russia and elsewhere would help counter falling 2025-26 harvests in Vietnam and Ukraine.
How did India’s rice 2025 production compare to 2024?
India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare projected rice harvest for the year ending June 2025 at 149 million tonnes. This is about 8.12% more than that of the year ending June 2024 at 137.8 million tonnes.
Where does India export rice?
The top 5 export destinations of rice from India are either in Asia or Africa, per the World Bank’s data interpretation below for 2023:
| Export country | Export Value |
| Saudi Arabia | $1.28 billion |
| Iran | $734.3 million |
| Iraq | $732.9 million |
| Benin | $570.6 million |
| UAE | $463.7 million |
| World | $10.5 billion |