Chickpeas’ incredible disappearing act is likely to continue on the Prairies, says Simpson Seeds founder Greg Simpson.
The crop doesn’t reward farmers and is risky even in good years.
“I’m not a fan,” Simpson said during a special crops outlook session at Informa Economics’ annual Canadian markets conference.
“We’ve processed them. We’ve worked with them. I just find the consistency and quality a challenge. Our calibres aren’t really what the world wants.”
Simpson said current varieties often produce seeds only seven to eight millimetres in size, but world buyers want 10 to 11 mm.
Read Also
Critical growing season is ahead for soybeans
What the weather turns out to be in the United States is going to have a significant impact on Canadian producers’ prices
The discounts for non-optimal sizes are steep. If a nine mm seed is priced at 25 to 28 cents per pound, an eight mm brings only 17to 20 cents and a seven 13 to 16 cents.
Such discounts rapidly shatter the crops’ profitability.
The crop seems like a risky chance for farmers, especially when combined with the need for a long growing season and vulnerability to disease.
Simpson said these factors explain why acreage has plunged from more than one million acres in Saskatchewan in 2001 to less than 200,000 in 2014.
A large world stockpile will en-courage Canadian acres to fall further, Simpson said.
Chickpeas were once the cat’s meow of prairie agriculture, with farmers pushing acreage up from less than 10,000 acres in 1996 to more than a million in 2001. The crop was touted as an ideally suited commodity to be grown on the western Prairies with a booming world demand.
However, that excitement has recently passed to lentils as chickpeas have become burdened by disease pressure, oversupply, and quality and size problems.
The new CDC Orion variety, with a large seed size, is raising hopes that the declining crop can be saved.
“We’ll see how it does.”
However, significant production and marketing improvements will be needed to encourage farmers to add the crop to their rotations.
“We need some significant im-provement and consistency in quality, better disease resistance,” said Simpson.
“It just doesn’t work well for farmers out there to produce.”
