Time farmers turned to red
Lentils have been part of the prairie pulse crop mix for more than a decade.
Usually, the decision at seeding time has been to grow Estons or Lairds, both green lentils.
Producers have become so successful that the market is usually oversupplied and prices are disappointing.
Mike Cey, a special crop merchandiser for Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, told a Saskatoon outlook conference that 150,000-200,000 acres must come out of production in order to get reasonable prices.
The replacement for those acres seems to be at hand – the red lentil.
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The Crop Development Centre at the University of Saskatchewan registered CDC Redwing a couple of years ago and the pool has the marketing rights.
Based on the amount of certified seed available, there could be as many as 50,000 acres seeded to the crop in 1998, up from 25,000 acres last summer, Cey said.
Red lentils have several benefits over their green cousins.
Agronomically speaking, they are resistant to ascochyta blight, have yield potential similar to Laird and are easy to harvest.
Cey admitted red lentil performance last summer in dry southern areas did not shine. They do better in wetter years when their disease resistant quality comes to the fore, he said.
Another benefit of the red variety is that because the market requires splitting, hull appearance is not as important as it is with green lentils. That means less downgrading on appearance.
Cey said Turkey is the world market leader in red lentils. It still produces a better looking product and regularly seeds more than one million acres to the crop.
But Canada has lower production costs and that will help it win a share of the world market, which is larger than the green lentil market, Cey said.
He noted Turkey dominated the green lentil market 15 years ago, but Canada now has the lead.
A spin-off benefit of growing red lentils is the development of a splitting industry, bringing jobs to rural communities, he added.
The pool signs production contracts with growers, who must use certified seed. All production must go to Sask Pool, which markets the crop on a pooled basis. This year it made an initial payment of 10 cents a pound with a final payment coming when the crop is all sold.
Cey couldn’t say what the final return will be, but he estimated it at about 15-20 cents a lb.
