Overview

• Agriculture Minister P. Prasad wrote to Union ministers on July 2 urging them to refrain from signing the India–US trade deal without formal state consultations.
• The letter warned that sweeping agricultural concessions could undermine livelihoods of smallholders reliant on coconut, rubber, pepper, cardamom, tea and coffee.
• Prasad highlighted that NITI Aayog’s proposal for duty-free imports of GM soybean and maize conflicts with India’s ban on genetically modified food crops.
• Kerala cautioned that opening the market to GM seeds and industrial feed products would benefit large US agribusinesses and erode organic farming and biodiversity in the Western Ghats.
• New Delhi’s negotiators are racing to secure tariff exemptions for labour-intensive sectors such as textiles, leather and engineering goods before the July 9 deadline to avert 26% US reciprocal tariffs.