India’s Livestock Product Exports Jump 44% as Buffalo Meat and Ghee Lead the Way

22 September 2026, New Delhi, India: India’s exports of livestock products rose 44 percent year-on-year to $3.132 billion in the first five months of the current financial year, April to August 2026, up from $2.177 billion in the same period last year, according to Ministry of Commerce trade data reported this week. August alone brought in $694 million, a 37.1 percent jump from the $506 million recorded in August 2025, suggesting the growth trend accelerated rather than levelled off as the year progressed.

Buffalo meat remained the single largest driver of the increase, a position it has held for several years as India has built itself into one of the world’s leading exporters of the product, supplying markets where beef consumption carries religious or cultural sensitivities that buffalo meat does not. Ghee and skimmed milk powder provided additional support, reflecting steady demand from the Indian diaspora and from West Asian and Southeast Asian buyers who use Indian dairy fats in food processing and retail. Poultry exports also showed signs of recovery, though officials noted this growth is concentrated in eggs and egg powder rather than chicken meat, which remains largely uneconomical to export given India’s domestic production costs relative to competitors.

Where the growth is coming from

Key destination markets for the expanded livestock trade include Vietnam and Malaysia in Southeast Asia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East and North Africa, and the United Arab Emirates, spanning three distinct demand pools: Southeast Asian food processors buying buffalo meat as a beef substitute, West Asian retail and hospitality markets sourcing dairy fats and meat for large expatriate populations, and African importers for whom Indian buffalo meat offers a lower-cost protein source than domestically produced or European alternatives.

The current pace builds on an already strong prior year. India’s full-year 2025-26 livestock product exports reached $6.215 billion, itself a 22 percent increase over the previous year, meaning the sector has now posted two consecutive years of double-digit or faster growth. If the April-August pace holds through the rest of financial year 2026-27, full-year exports would comfortably surpass last year’s total, though monsoon-linked feed costs, animal health outbreaks and shifting import regulations in destination markets, particularly China’s periodic scrutiny of Indian rice and other agricultural shipments, are reminders that export momentum in Indian agriculture can reverse quickly when a single large buyer tightens inspection standards.

A structural opportunity, with input-side implications

For India’s dairy and livestock economy, sustained export growth of this scale represents more than a trade statistic. India remains the world’s largest milk producer by volume but has historically lagged well behind other major dairy nations on per-animal productivity, meaning much of its milk output has gone toward domestic consumption rather than higher-value processed exports. A livestock sector that can reliably convert surplus buffalo meat, ghee and dairy byproducts into hard currency export earnings gives smallholder and pastoralist households, who make up the bulk of India’s roughly 80 million dairy-farming families, a stronger economic case for investing in animal health, breeding and feed quality, precisely the categories where agri-input and animal health companies compete for market share.

That is also the story’s relevance for Latin American readers: Brazil and Argentina remain the world’s dominant beef exporters and compete with India’s buffalo meat in several of the same Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern markets, even though the products serve different price points and consumer segments. Sustained Indian growth in low-cost protein exports adds incremental competitive pressure in markets like Vietnam and Egypt, while also expanding the addressable market globally for animal health, feed additive and breeding-technology companies that serve both the Indian buffalo sector and LATAM cattle ranching, since rising export volumes typically bring closer scrutiny of animal health and traceability standards in both regions.

Indian industry bodies have flagged quality standards, cold-chain logistics and diversification into higher-value processed products as the next priorities if the current export pace is to be sustained rather than treated as a one-off cyclical gain tied to favourable currency and global protein price conditions.

Why it matters for India/LATAM: India’s buffalo meat and dairy export surge adds a new low-cost competitor in Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern protein markets that Brazilian and Argentine beef exporters also target, while expanding demand for animal health and feed inputs across India’s smallholder livestock sector.

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