Canada has been too reliant on the Indian market for pulse exports, says Pulse Canada chief executive officer Gordon Bacon.
That came home to roost in the last few months when India imposed tariffs.
Pulse Canada intends to counteract that with a diversification strategy.
“We set a very specific target, saying that 25 percent of the demand for Canadian pulses has to come from new uses and new opportunities by 2025,” Bacon said at a Saskatchewan Pulse Growers regional meeting in Regina Feb. 5.
This would create two million tonnes of new demand, he added.
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Potential markets include more pulse rations in hog feed, adding pulses to snack foods to improve their nutritional quality and adding pulses to processed meat.
Bacon said adding more nutritional information to food labels is also a way to leverage more markets. For example, pasta with pulse content contains more fibre and protein than others.
The labels could be expanded to include the carbon footprint of the ingredients.
He said that would be a uniquely Canadian opportunity.
“Origins out of the Black Sea will not be able to supply this information,” he said.
It’s time to work co-operatively with other sectors, such as cereals and dairy, to provide what consumers are looking for, he said.
Rather than developing a plant-based burger, Bacon said a beef hamburger containing 30 percent lentil flour offers half the fat, 50 percent more fibre and a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Bacon said recent events in India aren’t the sole reason to develop additional markets, but they did provide the impetus to get moving.
“The Indian government is a very interventionist government,” he said.
Pulse policy is important there because 67 percent of the population lives in rural areas, agriculture’s share of unemployment is 49 percent and yet agriculture is the main livelihood for 58 percent of the population, he said.
