Canada is losing ground to the United States in one of its most valued lentil markets.
Spain is increasingly turning to U.S. product as lentil production flourishes south of the 49th parallel.
Marc Gagnon, commercial attachŽ at the Canadian embassy in Madrid, told growers attending Pulse Days 2005 that Spanish importers prefer U.S. Pardina lentils to Canadian lentils because they more closely resemble the locally grown Castellano lentil.
Despite harvesting a crop one-fifth the size of Canada’s, the U.S. has been able to capture more than half of the Spanish lentil market.
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American exporters provided 55 percent of the 49,000 tonnes sold in Spain in 2004, while Canadians supplied 42 percent.
Spain has consistently been a top-10 buyer of Canadian lentils, with annual sales averaging $9.8 million in the five years between 1998 and 2003.
“If we could find a way to produce Pardinas in Canada there is big room for expansion in Spain,” Gagnon said.
But that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, according to industry experts.
Simpson Seeds Inc. tried to introduce a Pardina lentil in the 1990s but the experiment was a flop, said Saskatchewan Pulse Growers director Lloyd Affleck.
He knows first-hand because he tried to grow the Spanish brown lentil on his farm near Beechy, Sask.
“The biggest problem we had with it was that it mutated back to its parent plant, which turned out to be black.”
Affleck is concerned about losing market share in Spain to American growers who produced 189,604 tonnes of lentils in 2004, up 71 percent from 2003 levels.
Industry expansion south of the border is showing no signs of abating. Stat Publishing is projecting 306,288 tonnes of U.S. production in 2005.
University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre breeder Bert Vandenberg said the Pardina lentils grown in the dry regions of the U.S. performed poorly in Saskatchewan because they are highly susceptible to ascochyta blight and anthracnose.
“They brought some over from Spain and started growing it but it doesn’t suit our climate.”
The centre is trying to develop a line well suited to Saskatchewan conditions but the market for Pardinas is small, about the same size as French greens, so it is not a breeding priority, said Vandenberg.
Spanish food broker Paco Navarro told the Pulse Days crowd that in the absence of Pardina lentils, foreign processors will continue importing Estons because they are small and “meaty” and don’t break apart when cooked like Lairds.
He said there is still plenty of opportunity for Canada to increase its lentil exports to a country that consumes 56,000 tonnes a year.
The bad news is that annual consumption of pulses has fallen to 4.6 kilograms per person in 2003 from 8.5 kg in 1987 because more women have joined the workforce leaving less time for cooking, said Gagnon.
However, in the last couple of years consumption of pulses has risen slightly, with increased immigration from Latin America and North Africa bringing a halt to the downward spiral.
