9th ASEAN-India Agriculture Ministerial Meeting Held in New Delhi

The Ninth ASEAN-India Ministerial Meeting on Agriculture and Forestry, called the 9th AIMMAF in short, took place in New Delhi on 9 September 2026. The release on it was issued the next day. Two ministers shared the chair. One was Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, for India. The other was Francisco P. Tiu Laurel, Secretary of the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines, who spoke for the chair of the ASEAN ministers on agriculture and forestry.

What the meeting agreed

The ministers described farm cooperation as a practical part of the ASEAN-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. They welcomed ASEAN 2045: Our Shared Future, the ASEAN Community Vision 2045 and the sectoral plan for food, agriculture and forestry for 2026-2030. They reviewed the risks facing food systems, among them climate change, extreme weather, geopolitical strain, price swings in energy and fertiliser, broken trade routes and diseases that cross borders. They stressed that supplies of fertilisers, seeds and pesticides must keep moving, that early warning must improve and that small farmers must be protected.

Achievements of the previous plan

• The medium-term plan of action for 2021-2025 was reviewed and its progress praised
• ASEAN-India Millets Festivals were held at Jakarta and New Delhi in 2023
• A fellowship for higher education in agriculture was launched in 2024, offering 50 master’s fellowships over five years to students of ASEAN member states
• Work advanced on smart farming, soil health and the use of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and machine learning in precision agriculture

The new plan

The meeting looked ahead to the medium-term plan of action for 2026-2030. It will run along four lines of work. The first is policy dialogue, food security, trade, investment and resilient value chains. The second is institutional networking, information exchange and digital innovation. The third is capacity building, technology cooperation and joint research. The fourth is human-resource development, farmer exchanges and inclusive rural enterprise. Priority will go to steps that farmers can actually use, such as low-emission rice, better water productivity, soil health and bio-inputs, food safety, post-harvest management, alternatives to burning crop residue in the open, and sustainable forest management.

The next meeting

Senior officials were asked to turn the plan into a rolling work programme with clear priorities, lead agencies, expected outputs and timelines. The ministers agreed to hold the Tenth ASEAN-India Ministerial Meeting on Agriculture and Forestry in 2028, and thanked the Government of India for hosting them.