Uday Raj Chauhan proudly sports a red t-shirt with “Maati ka lal” (son of the soil) printed on it. The shirt’s acrylic lettering has worn off with use, but Chauhan’s beaming smile could rival a toothpaste advertisement.
Indeed, toothpaste isn’t far off the mark. Chauhan is a mint farmer, one of many in the Uttar Pradesh state of northern India who depend on the crop. “I would have migrated from the village long ago in search of [a] livelihood if it was not for mint,” he says. “People in my village moved from a mud structure to a concrete house, thanks to mint.”
Mentha Arvensis, a species of mint known as “mentha” in India, is used in countless everyday products — from medicines and pain relievers to candy, mouth fresheners, cosmetics and tobacco. India is by far the world’s biggest producer and exporter of mentha oil, fulfilling around 80% of global demand. The bulk (70%) of this comes from Uttar Pradesh.
Yet what was once a stable cash crop is faltering. India’s mint farmers now face stiff competition from synthetic menthol, coupled with rising production costs and high taxes. These challenges are only exacerbated by climate change, which is making harvests less reliable.
They aren’t alone: Farmers and businesses around the globe are grappling with climate risks and market disruptions. But India’s mint industry is also exploring solutions across the supply chain — from trade reforms to more climate-resilient crop varieties — that can offer lessons for resilience in a changing world.
Mint: The ‘Green Gold’ of India’s Smallholder Farmers
Mentha farming has been a staple in Uttar Pradesh for over 40 years, particularly in the state’s Barabanki region. Once a hub for opium cultivation, Barabanki leaned into mint farming in the 1980s and has been India’s biggest producer since. Around the area, mint oil has earned monikers like “ATM” and “green gold.”
“Mentha provides instant cash,” says Dr. Sanjay Singh, Senior Principal Scientist at Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), a government-run research institute in Uttar Pradesh. “There are times when farmers don’t even have enough money to buy essentials. That is when a mentha farmer would sell half a kilogram of [mentha] oil from his reserve.”
Saroj Kumari Shukla, a resident of Barabanki district, is one such farmer. She lost her husband after 15 years of marriage and had to raise her six children alone. “I had a job, but it was not enough. Mentha came to our rescue in those days. Every time I had to pay the children’s school fees, I would sell two kilograms of [mentha] oil,” she said. “Even though my sons couldn’t study much, today my four daughters are well-educated and working.”
For Chauhan, mint has been a dependable source of cashflow. “Mentha brings an income in the season when no other crop grows. Its seed material, unlike chili and garlic, is also very affordable. It can be stored for [a long time] as it does not become rancid and doesn’t even occupy space like other [produce].”
Demand Is Rising — but Production Is Falling
The global mint market is projected to grow from US$ 7.7 billion in 2025 to US$9.7 billion in 2030. In theory, this should be a boon not just for mint farmers, but for all those whose livelihoods are linked to the crop — from planting and harvesting to processing and exporting. “One million people are involved in the mint supply chain in India, with 100,000 farm families and 3,000-4,000 traders just in Barabanki,” said Dr. Singh.
But even as farmers like Chauhan and Shukla are earning well from mint, many say its glory is fading.
In Barabanki, mint oil production decreased from around 11,200 metric tons (MT) in 2022-2023 to 7,950 MT in 2024-2025, according to Rajit Ram Verma, Secretary of the Barabanki district’s agricultural produce marketing committee. That’s nearly a 30% drop.
Gaurav Mittal from Aromatic & Allied Chemicals Pvt. Limited, a leading mint oil manufacturer and exporter in Uttar Pradesh, estimates that the total production across India came down by 60%-65% from 2023-2024.”We are linked to about 5,000 farmers in our region who supply directly to us. This year, many have shifted to sugarcane and other crops,” he said.
How Is Mint Oil Produced?
In Uttar Pradesh, farming for mentha suckers (offshoots that grow from the base of the mint plant) begins in July-August. The crop is sown from suckers in March and harvested from May to June, fitting well between the seasons for potato and paddy, the other dominant crops in the region. Once the harvest is dried, its essential oil is extracted in locally fabricated steam distillation units owned and operated by individual farmers or farmer collectives.
Farmers sell this mentha oil to aggregators in the village who further sell it to traders, exporters and small-scale and medium industries. The oil is either exported as-is or processed into menthol crystals and byproducts like Dementholized oil (DMO), alpha-pinene, beta-pinene and menthone.
What’s Ailing the Mint Industry?
Traders, industrialists, scientists and farmers largely blame synthetic menthol for downturn in Barabanki’s mint production.
Prices for natural mint oil can be volatile. When synthetic menthol — derived from Meta-cresol, a petrochemical — entered India around 2013, it offered an affordable alternative. “Since then, many Indian companies making menthol-based products shifted to it” said Tek Ram Sharma, a mint oil trader and chairman of essential oil company Ashri Naturals.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has also included synthetic menthol in its list of substances “generally recognized as safe”. “Since synthetic menthol is approved for use in edible products, companies would not want to spend more on natural menthol,” said Mittal. This has pushed prices down and driven some farmers to abandon natural mentha altogether.
Synthetics aren’t the only challenge. Mint faces high taxes in India. The national government charges a Goods and Services Tax of 12% on mint oil, and Uttar Pradesh charges a 1.5% Mandi tax (a tax on agricultural produce sold in markets) to mint oil traders.
In addition, many farmers rely on locally fabricated steam distillation units for producing mint oil. These are inefficient, polluting and prone to fatal accidents. While CIMAP has developed and introduced safer, more fuel-efficient distillation units, many farmers cannot afford them.
The Compounding Threats of Climate Change and Land Degradation
Market challenges may be the biggest hurdle for India’s mint farmers today. But they also face twin threats farmers around the world are increasingly grappling with: climate change and land degradation.
Mint is grown in peak summer and requires substantial irrigation. According to one study, even when used optimally, around 10 million liters of water are required to irrigate 1 hectare (ha) of mint. By comparison, it takes about 7 million liters of water to irrigate 1 ha of wheat and 5 million liters to irrigate 1 ha of maize (corn). “As water scarcity increases, farmers in Sambal, Chanduasi and Amroha [districts in Uttar Pradesh] and in parts of Punjab and Bihar are quitting mentha,” said Sharma.
Unlike these other regions, Barabanki has ample water thanks to its rivers and extensive canal network. But shifting weather patterns driven by climate change present their own problems.
“Untimely rainfall destroys ready harvest, while excess heat [over] the last two years has led to more pests and disease, even though heat also increases oil yield,” said Sudheer Kumar, a farmer from Badalkapurwa village in Uttar Pradesh.
Layer in the fact that much farmland is degraded, and some farmers are facing an onslaught of challenges at once. “Drawing water from a borewell costs more now due to increased diesel rates. After 20 years of mint farming, soil is also polluted with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Production has gone down while diseases have increased. We need to spray pesticides at least once a week now,” said Sanad Verma, another farmer in the region.
Verma adds that labor rates have more than tripled — from Rs 200 (US$2.32) to Rs 700 (US$8) per day — “because harvesting mentha and extracting oil in peak summer is a gruelling task.”
While organic farming may help improve soil quality and yields in the long term, it is out of question for most mint farmers, who don’t see monetary benefits in it. “A small farmer needs money all the time. Nobody will pay a better price for organic oil, so there is no reason to spend extra time and labour to cultivate organic mint,” said Ram Savle Shukla of Tandpur.
How India’s Mint Industry Is Building Resilience
Faced with mounting challenges — some local, some global — India’s mint industry is finding new ways to adapt throughout the supply chain.
Lessons for Supply Chains Around the World
Farmers and small businesses are often on the front lines of the climate crisis. Yet large companies tend to overlook these supply chain partners in their climate risk assessments and sustainability efforts. WRI, through the Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow (CREST) initiative, aims to create more resilient supply chains and help amplify the voices of the people within them. The Barabanki mint farmer is one of these voices. Explore more stories here.
At one end, traders and local politicians are pushing to reform taxes and trade policies that hamper the natural mint industry. In August 2024, a political representative from Barabanki worked with the Indian Parliament to separate natural and synthetic menthol in the country’s trade code. This is meant to help ensure that potential issues with synthetics (such as defective products) will not impact the natural mint market.
Others are working from the ground up, helping farmers build resilience to climate and market shocks.
“Mint is CIMAP’s baby. It took hard work to turn India from a mint importing country to the biggest exporter in the world. So we will do everything to sustain natural menthol in the market,” said Dr. Singh from CIMAP.
In 2017, CIMAP introduced early mint technology (EMT). This involves training farmers to produce mint stolons (stems) in a nursery and then transplant them onto ridges to ensure minimal plant loss and damage. EMT can lower the cost of production by reducing the need for weeding, irrigation and fertilizer. By cutting water use 25%-30%, it also helps reduce pressure on limited supplies. “We found that the cost of cultivation with EMT has come down by 20% while crop yield has gone up by 15%,” said Dr. Singh.
CIMAP is also working to develop more resilient and productive mint varieties. In 2020, it developed and distributed “CIM-Unnati” — a hardy and high-yielding varietal that can better withstand extreme weather while yielding 180-190 kilograms of mint oil per hectare. (Other varietals produce 120-150 litres per hectare.) Almost 90% farmers in Barabanki now grow CIM-Unnati.
Chauhan — who runs a YouTube channel called “Mentha’s new variety” — can attest to the benefits. “In 2020, I got 700 grams of a new variety of Menthol mint from CIMAP and made 1,000 saplings out of it. I propagated these saplings [on 0.25 hectares] of my land and got a profit of Rs 1.5 lakh (US$1,740) by selling mint suckers,” he said. Encouraged, Chauhan started the YouTube channel to promote his enterprise. “Farmers from far and wide come to buy mentha suckers from me. This year, I rented 1.2 hectares of land to expand [production].”
Beyond this, CIMAP is looking for ways to help stabilize mint farmers’ livelihoods. It supports activities like vermi compost production from distillation waste; mushroom cultivation; and beekeeping. “We are also exploring making disposable cutlery from mentha waste and aerosols from the water that comes out with oil at the time of distillation,” said Dr. Singh. This is helping to diversify mint farmers income, boost their resilience and reduce dependency on one crop.
Thanks to such initiatives, farmers like Chauhan are optimistic that mint prices will bounce back. And they are more securely positioned when climate extremes and other setbacks strike.
The Way Ahead
While large companies are increasingly focused on climate risks and sustainability, supply chain partners, such as smallholder farmers, tend to be left out of the equation. But this status quo can’t continue. For truly resilient supply chains, stakeholders need to work together to ensure that everyone involved — from production through to sale — has the tools, skills and knowledge to weather climate and economic shocks.
This will require coordinated efforts from governments, research institutions and the private sector. Barabanki shows how collaboration and innovation can make a difference, with CIMAP supporting farmers directly while traders and local politicians push for market reforms. Looking ahead, more support from the government could offer new avenues for investment and improvement. For example, as Dr. Sudeep Tandon, CIMAP’s Chief Scientist, points out, “Menthol is one crop in which farmers themselves do the first level of processing. The government gives subsidies for other agricultural equipment and machinery; why can’t there be a price support mechanism for menthol distillation units too?”
Such efforts are critical for all who depend on India’s mint supply chain. “Mentha has prevented distress migration in [Barabanki] to a large extent,” says farmer Ram Lagan Pal. “[The] district’s prosperity is only due to mentha.” More support for resilience-building efforts can help ensure that this prosperity continues.
Ravleen Kaur is an independent journalist working on environmental and rural issues in India. See more of her work here.