REGINA – The explosive growth of the Canadian special crops industry couldn’t have come at a better time.
As exports climbed to more than three million tonnes at the turn of the century, special crops traders discovered they had a captive market for their product.
Buyers in the Middle East and North Africa were stockpiling pulses for Ramadan, a month-long celebration of the Islamic faith.
But every year the start date for the celebration moves forward by 10 days.
It has advanced to the point where Canada is no longer in a position to supply pulses for Ramadan, a Turkish buyer told delegates attending the 18th annual Canadian Special Crops Association convention.
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That is bad news for western Canadian growers set to harvest a record amount of special crops.
“This (demand) wave will not come, so maybe price will be a little bit depressed in the beginning of the season,” said HŸseyin Arslan, who owns a processing company in Meslin, Turkey, along with a growing number of facilities in Saskatchewan operating under the Saskcan Pulse umbrella.
Arslan told the 322 delegates attending the two-day conference that Turkey will have a “tremendous advantage” supplying Ramadan buyers in the Middle East and North Africa for the next five to 10 years because its harvest now coincides with the month-long religious event.
That doesn’t mean the end of the world for Canadian exporters.
“There will always be demand. The demand peaks in Ramadan but in winter time there is traditional consuming.”
The Middle East and North Africa are home to more than 403 million people who typically eat about 19 percent of the world’s pulses and cereals.
An escalating population combined with a 24 percent decline in Middle Eastern pulse production over the past decade has led to a 113 percent increase in pulse crop imports between 1990 and 2000.
Annual purchases now exceed one million tonnes.
Arslan said Canada is well positioned to capitalize on post-Ramadan opportunities to re-stock pulse supplies for traditional winter consumption.
The demand will still be there; it just won’t occur in one big wave in August and September as it has in the past.
Arslan encouraged Canadian processors to “look eastwards” and ship more product through Montreal to the Middle East and North Africa in 2004. With rising freight costs to the Indian subcontinent and “severe shortages” of containers in Vancouver, it is becoming a more viable export option.
“People have to change port mentality from west to the east of Canada,” he said.
