Black Pepper Production by Country 2025

Black pepper is one of the most fundamental seasonings in a vast selection of cuisines from around the globe. Made from the dried, immature fruit of the pepper vine, it provides a pungent spice to dishes of all varieties, whether it’s integrated into recipes or used to amp up prepared dishes. But most of the world’s production of black pepper comes from just a few countries.

Vietnam is the world’s top black pepper producer, having grown 272,235 tons of the spice in 2022. That’s more than a third of the world’s overall production and more than twice the output of second place, Brazil, which produced 128,331 tons of black pepper. There’s another steep drop to Indonesia in third (81,962 tons), followed by Burkina Faso (76,856 tons) and India (64,205 tons) to round out the top five.

Seven of the world’s top ten black pepper producers are in Asia. Just ten nations worldwide produce more than 10,000 tons of black pepper annually as of 2022 - Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia, Burkina Faso, India, Sri Lanka (44,090 tons), Malaysia (38,169), China (33,816 tons), Tajikistan (23,839), and Mexico (10,815).

Among nations that are the smallest producers of black pepper, Samoa is last with 11 tons of the seasoning in 2022, followed by Saint Lucia (23), Bolivia (27), and Brunei (29). The world’s lowest producers are a mix of Pacific Island, Asian, and African nations.

The reasons for the disparity in pepper production aren’t clear, as the plant can grow effectively in most warmer regions of the globe, outside of portions of Europe, North America, and Antarctica. Global production grew more than 10% between 2019 and 2021, with the biggest increase in Vietnam. The countries with the largest declines in production between the years 2021 and 2022, however, are Vietnam (-3,510 t), Indonesia: (-1,354 t), Kenya: (-625 t), and Thailand (-292 t). The four countries with the largest increases in the same time period (2021-2022) are Brazil (+10,274 t), Burkina Faso (+8,863 t), Malaysia (+6,533 t), and Tajikistan (+2,266 tonnes).