The president of Pulse Canada recently returned from a fact-finding mission to China with one fact he found particularly interesting.
“The conclusion I came to is that China will be anything it wants to be in the bean industry,” said Gordon Bacon.
“Beans are the crop where China has hit the world stage in a big way.”
In the last five years the country has emerged as a major exporter of the commodity and that trend doesn’t seem to be abating. The government continues to set higher production targets for beans.
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Chinese bean exports soared to 471,289 tonnes in 2002, which was more than 10 times the amount the country shipped in 2001. In the process China surged past the 290,000 tonnes of product Canada shipped last year.
There is a lesson in those numbers. Most of China’s beans went to low-priced markets like Cuba, South Africa and Iraq.
Canada shouldn’t bother trying to compete with China on price alone in those destinations, said Bacon.
“Canadian production is going to have to ensure that it can differentiate itself in the quality conscious markets.”
On his trip Bacon saw pulses grown under a variety of production systems, ranging from primitive operations that averaged 1.2 acres in size to modern state farms where large crops of beans were seeded in rows with sophisticated machinery.
Provincial and national governments in China are placing a high priority on the latter, trying to create a system similar to North American agriculture. But even in those sophisticated farms there are some glaring differences.
“These acres are still cut by hand and harvested by hand,” said Bacon.
Farmers use sickles to cut beans, chickpeas, lentils and peas across the country, a method has its obvious technological drawbacks, but also advantages.
“There are some canners in Europe who prefer Chinese product because of the fact you get a lot less damage on seeds that are cut and harvested by hand.”
And since labour is cheap, it’s a cost-effective way of harvesting pulses.
“They have people who hand pick beans for a $1 day. It’s tough to compete with government-owned land and low labour costs,” said Bacon.
But low prices don’t always secure markets. Bacon said politics may be opening the door for U.S. beans in two of China’s key export destinations – Cuba and Iraq.
