There was no official word on what is happening with India’s plan regarding crop import fumigation as of March 20 when this column was written.
But word was circulating among pulse industry players that the Indian government will again defer the requirement that fumigation be done at the point of export.
The extension would be for one year.
That would be good for Canada’s $1 billion annual trade in peas and lentils with India.
However, if this talk proves unfounded, then as of April 1 Canada and other exporters to India will have to fumigate shipments with methyl bromide at the port where the crop leaves the country, or divert it to a third country to have the process completed. India would no longer allow fumigation upon arrival.
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If it were no longer possible to fumigate upon arrival in India, it would present a complication to Canada, which avoids methyl bromide use because it harms the ozone layer and because methyl bromide is not effective during cold months.
One reason for India’s get-tough stance this year, after providing multiple exemptions from the fumigation requirement for years, is that its farmers produced their best pulse crop in years.
The extra supply is pushing down pulse prices, hurting the income of Indian farmers and likely discouraging pulse planting in the coming summer crop. So some in India believe it would be good to limit competition from imports.
The fumigation requirement is one way, but import taxes are another option.
The Business Standard, an Indian newspaper, reported March 11 that the central government is studying a proposal to raise the import duty on pulses to control how much comes into the country.
There was no official word on what the government intends to do on that proposal.
Uncertainty reigns.
However, one thing is clear — with much larger domestic summer and winter pulse crops, India will likely import fewer pulses in coming months than it has in the past few years when crops there suffered from inadequate monsoon rain in 2014 and 2015.
The monsoon season begins in June and runs through most of summer.
In 2016, the rain accumulation was good, leading to the current bumper crop.
But what of 2017 crops?
The monsoon forecast for this year is clouded by what appears to be a rapid warming of equatorial Pacific Ocean temperatures, which could lead to an El Nino.
El Nino events in the past have contributed to weak Indian monsoons.
This year, the water temperature has not yet reached official El Nino status, but weather in some places is already concerning.
Abnormal warming of water off of Peru in South America has caused exceptionally heavy rain that brought about floods and landslides, which have caused deaths, destroyed homes, damaged crops and infrastructure.
Peruvian scientists say this type of situation usually happens after a full-scale El Nino develops, but this year it is a local phenomenon.
The United States National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said Pacific Ocean temperatures were neutral in February, but prediction models showed an increasing chance of an El Niño developing.
The CPC said the mostly likely scenario is for an El Nino to arrive in the Northern Hemisphere autumn. In that case, it would likely have little impact on India’s monsoon.
But some models show it arriving as early as this spring.
Australia’s weather service said last week that six of eight models show the threshold might be reached by July.
The impacts of an El Nino can vary depending on its intensity and on other factors such as the Indian Ocean dipole, a weather-generating phenomenon linked to temperatures of that body of water.
But broadly speaking, El Ninos tend to contribute to dry weather in India, Australia and the two palm oil giants Indonesia and Malaysia.
They contribute to wetter than normal weather in parts of South America.
The impact on Western Canada’s crops is variable, but El Nino years tend to have mild winters there.
A strong El Nino developed in 2015. In that year, the early part of the Prairie growing season was dry in Alberta and western Saskatchewan. But the summer turned wet in most parts, except for northern and north-central Alberta.
