The dal on your plate may be Australian: India is now the biggest buyer of Australian lentils

In August 2026, Australia exported 117,018 tonnes of lentils, and 86,429 tonnes of them, close to three in every four, went to India. Across June, July and August 2026, India took 141,059 of the 232,594 tonnes of Australian lentils shipped, according to Australia’s official trade statistics as reported to the United Nations Comtrade database. The same data show India was the largest buyer of Australian lentils across calendar 2025, taking 506,199 of 1.37 million tonnes, about 37 per cent, ahead of Bangladesh on 456,854 tonnes. India’s government, meanwhile, has approved a six-year mission aimed at self-sufficiency in pulses.

Most of what Australia grows in this category leaves the country. Grains Australia, the industry body, states that “around 90% of Australia’s pulse production is exported and the majority of these products are used in food and food ingredients”.

Where Australian lentils are grown

The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) southern region GrowNotes, published in 2018, states: “In Australia, lentil is predominantly grown in the semi-arid regions of South Australia and Victoria.”

The September 2026 Australian Crop Report from ABARES, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, forecasts that lentil production will rise 5 per cent to a second consecutive record of 2.3 million tonnes in 2026-27, more than double the 10-year average to 2025-26. ABARES cites continued expansion in area and excellent conditions in South Australia and Victoria. Its state tables put South Australia’s crop at 1.2 million tonnes from 600,000 hectares and Victoria’s at 933,000 tonnes, together more than nine in every ten tonnes of the national forecast.

India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, in its third advance estimates released on 27 May 2026, put the country’s 2025-26 lentil crop at 1.762 million tonnes. ICAR’s Indian Institute of Pulses Research names Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as the leading producing states, and calls lentil “the principal legume crop in the rice fallow belts of eastern India”. ABARES’s forecast for Australia’s 2026-27 crop is larger than that Indian estimate for 2025-26.

Chickpeas are moving the other way: ABARES forecasts production to fall by 52 per cent to just over 1 million tonnes in 2026-27. In August 2026, India took 90,576 of the 185,334 tonnes of chickpeas Australia exported.

What India buys, and from whom

India is not the top buyer every month. In July 2026, Bangladesh took 42,232 tonnes of Australian lentils and India 35,831 tonnes. Over a full year, though, India led in both 2024 and 2025. In 2025 Australia’s lentil exports were worth US$752.4 million, of which India accounted for US$274.1 million.

India’s own import records show Australia competing with Canada. Figures from India’s Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, published by the Department of Commerce, show India imported 1,146,929 tonnes of lentils worth US$659.72 million in the 2025-26 financial year (April 2025 to March 2026). Australia supplied 565,528 tonnes, worth US$321.42 million, almost half the total and ahead of Canada on 533,273 tonnes. A year earlier Canada had led, with 626,025 tonnes to Australia’s 469,769 tonnes. In April to July 2026, Canada supplied 470,054 tonnes and Australia 75,759 tonnes, of 577,940 tonnes in total.

What India charges on lentils

India’s duty on lentils changed in March 2025 and, on the official record, has not changed since. Notification 16/2025-Customs, dated 7 March 2025, set a basic customs duty of 5 per cent and an Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess (AIDC) of 5 per cent on lentils (mosur) from 8 March 2025, and exempted them from the social welfare surcharge. Australia’s Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry told exporters in an Industry Advice Notice of 12 March 2025 that on 8 March “the tariff free exemption for the export of lentils to India ceased”, leaving India’s most favoured nation rate for lentils at 10 per cent.

On 1 November 2025, notification 45/2025-Customs, dated 24 October 2025, came into force, consolidating 31 older exemption notifications into one. It lists “Lentils (Mosur)” at a 5 per cent standard rate, and separately describes masoor as lentils in its entry for other pulses. The AIDC on lentils remains 5 per cent under notification 11/2021-Customs as amended in March 2025. A check of the customs tariff notifications published by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs in 2026, up to 6 October, including the Budget notifications of 1 February 2026, finds none that changes the lentil rates.

What the trade deal does for Australian lentils in India

The Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement, ECTA, entered into force on 29 December 2022. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) states that tariffs on over 85 per cent of Australia’s exports to India were eliminated that day, and that ECTA will eliminate tariffs on over 90 per cent of Australia’s goods exports to India by value. Lentils were handled differently. DFAT lists an “immediate 50% tariff reduction within an annual quota of 150,000 tonnes for lentils”.

India’s implementing notification, 62/2022-Customs, sets the quota at 1.5 lakh metric tonnes and the concession at 50 per cent of the applied rate, which it defines as the tariff rate plus the AIDC. It defines the quota year as 1 January to 31 December, and the quota is allotted to importers by India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade. The Department of Agriculture’s notice says 37,500 tonnes are available each quarter, first come, first served, and put the in-quota rate at 5 per cent. Once a quarter’s amount is used, “exports will be subject to India’s prevailing tariff rate”.

Set the quota against the trade. Australia shipped more than three times the 150,000 tonne annual quota to India in 2025, and its 122,260 tonnes in July and August 2026 compare with 37,500 tonnes for the July to September quarter.

DFAT’s India country brief states that the two countries are negotiating a wider bilateral agreement, the CECA, and lists agriculture among the areas where cooperation is progressing. It also reports that “Australian agricultural exports to India increased by 131 per cent from $1 billion in 2022 to $2.3 billion 2025”, in Australian dollars.

India wants to grow its own

India’s government has set out to reduce its dependence on imported pulses. In her Union Budget speech of 1 February 2025, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said: “Our Government will now launch a 6-year “Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses” with a special focus on Tur, Urad and Masoor.” She added that the central agencies NAFED and NCCF “will be ready to procure these 3 pulses, as much as offered during the next 4 years from farmers who register with these agencies and enter into agreements”.

India’s Economic Survey 2025-26 records that the mission, “aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in pulses, was approved on October 1 2025”, and that its purpose is “to reduce import dependency on pulses by increasing productivity”. The Survey notes that between 2021-22 and 2024-25 “pulses have experienced a decline in output and acreage”, while oilseeds and cereals other than maize grew modestly.

What it means in an Australian kitchen

For Australians who cook Indian food, the lentils grown in South Australia and Victoria come from a pulse industry that, according to Grains Australia, exports around 90 per cent of its production, and the largest buyer of Australian lentils in 2024 and 2025 was India. For Indians living in Australia, India’s own figures put the 2025-26 lentil crop at 1.762 million tonnes, against imports of 1,146,929 tonnes in the 2025-26 financial year, almost half of them from Australia.

The 2026 figures cover one season: large shipments to India in mid-2026 and a forecast second record Australian crop. The settings behind them, as at 6 October 2026, are a 10 per cent applied Indian duty on lentils that has stood since 8 March 2025, a calendar-year quota of 150,000 tonnes within which Australian lentils pay half that rate, a six-year Indian mission focused on tur, urad and masoor, and a wider trade agreement still under negotiation. On the Australian side, GRDC is funding heat-tolerance trials led by Agriculture Victoria. GRDC’s GroundCover reports: “The intention is to expand the area where lentils can be grown in Australia and make the crop more resilient generally as temperatures warm.”