Pulse grower groups are doing a poor job of promoting domestic consumption of peas, says an industry analyst, an allegation the industry denies.
Canada will post record exports of the legume in 2005-06 but local sales are slumping badly, according to the editor of Stat Publishing, a widely read specialty crop newsletter.
“Is there a domestic marketing failure in peas? I think that there is,” said Brian Clancey.
According to his calculations, as of the end of March, 280,781 tonnes of peas had been consumed domestically. That compares to 630,133 tonnes a year earlier.
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Producers grew 3.1 million tonnes of peas in 2005-06, which when added to carry-out stocks was the largest supply of peas on record. And prices were hovering near historical lows for most of the season.
So why had Spanish livestock producers paid the freight to import 680,000 tonnes of the product by the end of March, while producers here had only used 280,000 tonnes?
“I don’t believe that the industry has ever put the effort that it needs to into the domestic market,” said Clancey.
Michelle Fleury, livestock market development consultant with the pulse grower groups in Saskatchewan and Alberta, disputes Clancey’s findings.
She surveyed nine of the country’s top feed pea buyers and found seven had increased their consumption of peas.
The two that hadn’t had found a cheaper supply of a competitive ingredient.
“Thank goodness we’re not selling the peas at that price,” said Fleury.
Her findings are more in line with Agriculture Canada’s latest pulse and special crops outlook, which forecast one million tonnes of peas in the domestic use column by the end of the current crop year, down only slightly from the 1.1 million tonnes used in 2004-05.
Dave Walker, general manager of Walker Seeds Ltd., a Tisdale, Sask., pulse processing firm, also questions Clancey’s analysis.
“I’m really curious about how Brian comes to that conclusion,” he said.
“We sell quite a bit into the domestic market and I have a little bit of difficulty understanding why that demand would be off at all.”
But even using Agriculture Canada’s numbers, once the seed supplies for next year’s crop are taken out of the estimate, domestic consumption pales in comparison to foreign sales, which the industry finds puzzling.
“I’ve asked myself ‘how can we afford to send peas over to Spain and can’t get them into Manitoba’ a hundred times if I’ve asked it once,” said Fleury.
“The logic of it escapes me.”
Clancey concludes it is due to inconsistent marketing efforts that come in waves rather than the sustained push by competing commodity groups.
He claims pulse grower groups are more interested in improving yields and expanding acreage in an effort to boost check-off income than they are in building domestic markets.
While he acknowledged there have been “pretty publications” and research dollars spent on feeding trials, he said the industry lacks the ongoing presence at livestock and feed industry shows and the advertising in livestock publications required to elevate the status of peas.
Clancey points to the Feed Pea Focus newsletter published by the three prairie grower groups, which used to come out three times a year but lately has been sporadic.
In 2003 there was one issue, in 2004 there was none, in 2005 there were two and so far in 2006 there has been one issue.
“I tell you, that’s not marketing,” said the former special crops trader.
But Fleury said only one of the six nutritionists she spoke to indicated they would like to see more advertising and promotion of feed peas. The rest wanted solid performance data on the nutritional properties of the ingredient.
“Nobody told me they wanted to see me at the trade show. They want data from me that they can actually take home and use in their jobs.”
That is why pulse grower groups are devoting resources to feed research and development projects, she said.
