Rapeseed planting in India is expected to hit a new high this year due to record Chinese rapeseed meal purchases and above-average rainfall that resulted in favourable soil moisture for the crop, according to a Reuters report.
As the country’s primary winter-sown oilseed, the surge in rapeseed production was also likely to help India – the world’s largest importer of edible oil – limit costly overseas purchases of cooking oils, the 5 November report said.
“Farmers made great profits from last year’s rapeseed crop, so this year, they’re planting even more of it,” Anil Chatar, a leading trader based in Jaipur in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, was quoted as saying.
The combined planting area for rapeseed and mustard – a closely related crop – was expected to increase by 7% to 8% this year, he said.
Indian farmers typically plant rapeseed in October and November. To date, they had planted 4.17M ha this year, a 13.5% increase compared to the same time the previous year.
The country planted 8.93M ha of rapeseed last year, higher than the five-year average of 7.9M ha, the report said.
Domestic demand for rapeseed oil had been good this year, while strong export demand for rapeseed meal had come from China, B V Mehta, executive director of Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA) was quoted as saying.
China had increased rapeseed meal shipments from India after Beijing imposed a 100% retaliatory tariff on rapeseed meal and oil imports from Canada – its top supplier – in March, Reuters wrote.
In the first six months of the current fiscal year, which began on 1 April, China imported a record 488,168 tonnes of rapeseed meal from India, compared to 60,759 tonnes for the entire 2024/25 fiscal year, the SEA data showed.
Strong demand for both meal and oil had kept rapeseed prices above the minimum support price of INR5,950 (US$68)/100kg set by New Delhi for last year’s crop, Chatar said.
India has increased the minimum support price for the new season’s rapeseed by 4.2% to INR6,200 (US$70).
“Rapeseed has way more oil than soyabeans. If production keeps up with the planting, it’ll help slow down the growth in India’s edible oil imports,” a Mumbai-based dealer with a global trade house, who declined to be named, was quoted as saying.
India meets nearly a third of its cooking oil demand through imports of palm oil, soyabean oil and sunflower oil from Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Ukraine and Russia, according to the report.
