There is no let-up in demand for Canadian peas abroad in 2007, but it’s a different story at home.
The ingredient priced its way out of pig rations a long time ago, said Florian Possberg, chief executive officer of Big Sky Farms Inc., one of Canada’s largest hog production operations.
“We’re still using peas in a couple of sites but it would probably be no more than a couple percent of our diets overall.”
By contrast, peas comprised about 20 percent of Big Sky’s rations in 2004-05 and 2005-06, when supply was plentiful and prices were competitive with alternative ingredients.
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Possberg laments the loss of the pulse crop, valued for its high energy and protein content.
“And quite frankly, the pigs love them,” he added.
“If we had our druthers we’d love to be using peas because they work so well.”
His company uses green and yellow peas in its rations. Possberg said he’d use pink peas if there was such a thing.
But while peas fit into rations when prices were $3.50 to $4 per bushel, they don’t at today’s values. It doesn’t help that growers harvested mostly human consumption quality peas this fall, decreasing the supply of feed peas.
Big Sky’s 25 feed mills have to rely on a substitute product, a mixture of canola meal for protein and cereal grain for energy.
Possberg doesn’t see that pattern changing until the next crop is harvested. The feed pea shortage is cyclical and driven largely this year by a seemingly insatiable demand out of India for human consumption peas, he said.
But this year also testifies to how fast grain markets can change. He hopes peas will again be a competitive ingredient next fall.
“We’ll go back to peas in a heartbeat as long as supply and price is something that works for us. We didn’t abandon peas as much as the peas abandoned us,” he said.
