Pulse Canada wants to take a tiny nibble out of China’s feed grain smorgasbord.
The country produced 93 million tonnes of feed last year and is expected to double that production over the next decade.
However, members of China’s feed industry say that still won’t be enough raw material to supply the country’s burgeoning livestock sector. China’s beef and pork sectors have grown 33 percent and 23 percent respectively in the last five years in an attempt to keep pace with a growing appetite for meat among the country’s 1.3 billion citizens, a hunger fuelled by the country’s booming economy, which expanded 9.5 percent in 2004. The trickle-down effect is generating a surging demand for corn, soybean and alternative feed ingredients.
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“The demand for feed is something China cannot keep up with despite their efforts to try and keep a balance between their internal supply and demand,” said Greg Cherewyk, program manager for Pulse Canada.
Canada’s feed pea industry hopes to fill a small portion of that production gap through the gradual introduction of what is a novel feed ingredient in that part of the world.
China’s pea imports from Canada have averaged 65,000 tonnes over the past five years but the lion’s share is for human consumption in northern noodle markets.
In a good year, feed pea exports would amount to 1,000 tonnes.
In an effort to boost that total, Pulse Canada initiated five feeding trials in the summer of 2004. Feedback from the experiments is encouraging.
“Right across the board they said they had excellent results,” Cherewyk said.
Feed mills that were skeptical about incorporating peas into livestock rations were asking for quotes on larger test volumes when Pulse Canada officials met with them in March. Companies have expressed interest in importing about 6,000 tonnes of Canadian feed peas in 2005.
Cherewyk said Pulse Canada is focusing its marketing efforts on the province of Guangdong in southeastern China, a region it feels holds the best potential for feed peas.
It is far away from the country’s corn and soybean growing regions, leading to some of the country’s highest feed grain costs. Most of the region’s feed manufacturers have facilities at the port, eliminating inland freight costs. As well, it is home to a number of large livestock farms.
“They’re not just pigs in the back yard, they’re commercial-sized operations,” Cherewyk said.
The plan is to cultivate a sense of familiarity and comfort with peas among a few influential Guangdong feed manufacturers, which should eventually translate into a manageable level of new demand.
Pulse Canada wants to avoid over-hyping the product or using a shotgun marketing approach because the last thing it wants is for the industry to suddenly be faced with servicing a 500,000 tonne market at the peril of established customers in Spain and the Netherlands.
Cherewyk thinks a reasonable goal would be to sell 100,000 tonnes of feed peas to China over the next three years, a 100-fold increase over what moved there in the previous three years.
Price could be a sticking point. New buyers will likely need a 20 to 25 percent discount from corn and soybeans to entice them to incorporate an unfamiliar ingredient into their rations.
Pulse Canada hopes to mitigate that discount factor by increasing customers’ comfort zone with peas. One way it plans to do that is to hire a local animal nutritionist in conjunction with the Canola Council of Canada.
He will act as Canada’s feed industry consultant in China, co-ordinating feeding trials, speaking at seminars and conferences, meeting face-to-face with feed manufacturers in Guangdong and reporting back to Canada on a monthly basis.
