Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, spoke at the G20 Trade Ministers' Meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and underlined the importance of food at the centre of global security, stability and cooperation.
He spoke during a session entitled “Weaponisation of Food through Coercive Trade Action” where trade ministers pondered fundamental issues facing the global trading system.
Goyal said that countries should have common aims to ensure that food is the basis for security, stability and cooperation. His comments were amid wider G20 discussions about the impact of trade related measures on food, agricultural products and agricultural inputs.
A key point made by the minister was that weaponisation of food supply chains must be distinguished from legitimate action taken by countries. According to Goyal, countries can pursue trade and policy measures to make sure they meet their domestic interests and to meet their food security needs, but such actions cannot be viewed as coercive uses of food supply chains.
The issue has caught the attention of the G20 trade agenda under the 2026 US Presidency. The G20 Trade Ministers’ Meeting is held in Milwaukee from September 30 to October 1, and will cover many major issues of international trade including coercive trade actions related to food, structural excess capacity and production, the Most-Favoured Nation principle and the elimination of forced labour from global supply chains.
The food discussion focuses on the larger effects that trade restrictions and disruptions of agricultural goods and inputs can have on economies and consumers.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has also identified coercive trade actions involving food, agricultural products and agricultural inputs as an area with significant consequences for economies and people.
For India, the G20 trade talks are also relevant to a larger perspective on a rules-based international trading system. The meeting is a forum for countries to debate trade policies and the problem of access to markets, food security and global supply chains, and the need for better management of food security is not only discussed but also addressed at length in the G20.
The G20 Trade Ministers’ Meeting is part of a larger range of discussions under the US G20 presidency. Trade Working Group meetings have taken place throughout 2026 to prepare the issues for ministerial consideration.
Indonesia, also participating in the meeting, has also stated it wants G20 trade initiatives to be consistent with World Trade Organization rules and work toward fair, open and rules-based trade systems.
Goyal’s comments put food security and international trade at the heart of the ongoing G20 discussions and stress the need for differentiating coercive trade practices from legitimate domestic policy and food security needs for countries.
