Countries negotiating bilateral deals for a variety of crops and animal products, and the pea file is the most advanced
By Sean Pratt
SASKATOON — Canada may soon be facing more competition in one of its top markets for peas.
The State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection is in negotiations with China’s General Administration of Customs to open the Chinese market to a variety of Ukrainian crop and animal products.
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The parties recently discussed draft bilateral agreements on the export of peas, wheat flour, pet food, beef, corn, poultry and wild-caught aquatic products from Ukraine to China, according to a UkrAgroConsult article.
“Our goal is to open seven new markets,” said Oleg Osiyan, first deputy head of the State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection.
“This is a long process of approval, but step-by-step we are succeeding.”
The protocol on peas is one of the furthest advanced. It is just completing domestic approval in Ukraine, and the texts have been sent to China for consideration.
“This is one of the markets at the final stage of opening,” Vadym Chaikovsky, Ukraine’s chief state phytosanitary inspector, said in an article published by APK-Inform.
“After the signing of the bilateral protocol, new opportunities for Ukrainian agrarian business to export peas will open up.”
The country’s biggest customers have traditionally been Turkey, Italy, Bangladesh, India and Malaysia.
Canada used to have a stranglehold on the Chinese market, with a 95 to 97 percent market share.
That changed suddenly when China and Russia signed a phytosanitary agreement in October 2022. The first Russian shipment of peas cleared Chinese customs in July 2023.
Russia has since quickly displaced Canada as the top exporter to that market.
It shipped 1.13 million tonnes of peas to China in 2023-24, according to Russia’s Union of Grain Exporters.
That gave it a 49.1 percent market share compared to Canada’s 44.6 percent.
Ukraine will not be as fierce a competitor in the Chinese market. Its farmers harvested 470,400 tonnes of peas this year and could ship out 400,000 tonnes, according to UkrAgroConsult.
That compares to Russia’s crop, which one member of the trade recently pegged at a disappointing 3.5 to 3.7 million tonnes.
Tareq Awad, a trader for Fruitimpex, said in a Global Pulse Confederation article that bad weather reduced yields after farmers planted nearly five million acres of the pulse.
Russia’s total supply of yellow peas will be around four million tonnes. Awad expects the country to maintain its position as the leading exporter to China.
He said 30 per cent of Russia’s peas are suitable for human consumption with the remainder destined for feed markets.
Sergey Pluzhnikov, chief executive officer of Russian Pulses Analytics, doesn’t expect much pea trade between Ukraine and China, at least initially.
“I think it will be no more than 50,000 to 100,000 tonnes for the start,” he said in a text message.
He believes there is no pressing need for China to bring in a lot of Ukrainian peas and it will be paying close attention to crop quality.
In the meantime, China will be closely watching conditions in Ukraine, monitoring seeds, fields and the accreditation of producers and exporters.
“This is a rather laborious and long process,” said Pluzhnikov.
He said China is looking for alternatives to Canadian supplies just like India is discussing the production of pigeon peas in Australia, Brazil and Argentina, and Turkey is encouraging Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to produce more pulses for its factories.
China imported 657,000 tonnes of peas during the first half of 2024, which is 22 per cent below the same time a year ago, according to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
“Industry contacts explained the reasons for this decline as excessive stockpiles (led by a massive increase in imports in 2023), exchange rate fluctuations, increase in sea transportation costs and trade policy uncertainties,” stated the report.
China imported 2.6 million tonnes of the pulse in 2023, a 64 per cent increase over 2022 levels. Many of those peas are still sitting in storage.
