SASKATOON (Staff) – Ottawa and Washington are helping lentil prices this year.
“Government involvement is creating demand in the form of food aid,” said Humboldt Flour Mills vice-president of sales Steve Gadient, during a presentation to the annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Pulse Crop Development Board.
The Canadian International Development Agency has also created demand – buying 6,223 tonnes so far in the crop year compared to 5,700 tonnes in 1993.
Non-profit organizations in Canada are also creating unlooked-for demand by buying 6,000 tonnes of lentils for foreign and domestic food aid.
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From the beginning of June to the end of December, the U.S. government had purchased 5,700 tonnes of lentils for food aid compared to 4,220 tonnes during the same time frame in 1993.
The U.S. is also going to be putting out a food aid tender for 14,000 tonnes soon, Gadient said.
Gadient said he hasn’t seen that much demand in Canada for “quite some time.”
Canadian lentil acreage set a record last year at 965,000. Production of 450,000 tonnes was also a record.
Canada’s top buyer
Statistics Canada is predicting Canadian exports will reach 310,000 tonnes. In 1993-94, the European Union was Canada’s top lentil buyer.
Carryover of about 117,000 tonnes going into the 1995-96 crop year shouldn’t weigh down the lentil market, Gadient said.
He predicted prices will probably decline slightly until the 1995 crop comes off to about 17-18 cents for Laird lentils, while Estons will be about two cents higher.
Gadient predicts lentil acreage in Canada will drop more than 200,000 acres to 739,000 this year, while U.S. acreage will drop by 85,000 to 140,000.
But he said those numbers could change if farmers look at the fertility benefits of a lentil and pea crop as a way to offset higher fertilizer costs.
