An issue flagged as a potentially disastrous trade barrier for the pea industry appears to be having little real impact on sales.
China began enforcing a national food contaminant standard in the first half of 2006, disrupting pea shipments from Canada and the United States found to contain unacceptably high levels of selenium.
Working through their embassies, Canadian and U.S. pulse groups persuaded China’s grain inspection agency to accept peas imported for processing.
That temporary solution has restarted trade.
Canadian pea traders exported 215,000 tonnes to China between Aug. 1 and April 30 of the 2006-07 crop year, making it Canada’s second largest pea customer to date.
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“They’ve been going strong since the start of the crop year,” said Brian Clancey, special crops analyst with Stat Publishing newsletter.
Volumes are slightly below the record-setting pace of 286,000 tonnes over the same time frame in 2005-06, a year in which Canada finished with 301,000 tonnes of pea sales to China, more than double the previous high despite the selenium issue.
Chinese vermicelli manufacturers have discovered yellow peas are a cheap substitute to domestically produced mung beans, kidney beans and broad beans, the traditional raw ingredients used to make the white-coloured or translucent noodles found in many Chinese dishes.
Pea demand was estimated at 400,000 tonnes in 2006, with the lion’s share supplied by Canada.
Pea imports are forecast to increase again in
2007-08, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
Soaring domestic mung bean prices have vermicelli manufacturers in Shandong province turning to yellow peas, which are also providing starch for instant noodles and fillers in moon cakes and dim sum food items.
“(The U.S. embassy) forecasts that processors will increasingly use imported dry peas to substitute for mung, kidney and broad beans,” stated the report issued on June 1.
Clancey said he sees no reason to doubt the forecast because Canada has been shipping one boatload of peas per month to China since last summer.
He feels the trade barrier issue was overblown.
“The selenium thing is just a hiccup, it’s an annoyance.”
Clancey recalls a similar problem with cadmium back in his crop trader days when he was shipping flax to Germany. The solution then was to buy product from areas of the Prairies with low levels of cadmium.
Serious exporters took the same creative approach with the selenium issue, turning a threat into a competitive advantage.
“You can let the industry through the various associations wail away as if it’s the end of the world and quietly do your business,” Clancey said.
As another way around the newly enforced standard, some exporters have shipped human consumption peas to China as feed peas.
