Number crunchers are starting to quantify what has been the talk of the pulse trade since winter.
According to Statistics Canada, sales to India and Pakistan from August to the end of March are up 58 percent from the same period last year.
“The thing with India is this enormous vacuum gets switched on and it just sucks up what’s out there as long as it’s, in their view, competitively priced,” said Xcan Grain Pool Ltd. trader Martin Chidwick.
Canadian exporters have shipped 236,167 tonnes of pulses to those two countries during the first eight months of the 2000-01 crop year, up from 149,190 tonnes one year ago.
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Peas account for most of that volume, but chickpeas had the biggest increase in sales – shooting up 413 percent to 42,428 tonnes from 8,260 tonnes during the first eight months of the 1999-00 crop year.
Part of the reason for the strong sales to the Indian subcontinent is its poor winter harvest. Farmers there didn’t get the monsoon rains they needed.
But special crops trader Gerald Donkersgoed thinks there’s more to it than that.
“Canada is becoming such an efficient producer that we’re displacing or taking over local production in some countries,” said the exporter for Finora Canada Ltd.
He said Canada picked up more than its share of the demand from India and Pakistan, beating out rivals Australia and Myanmar.
While most of the trade has been for peas and chickpeas, lentils are moving as well.
“The biggest benefit that I’ve got from that is we’ve had a buyer for our lower-grade red lentils,” said Shaun Wildman, a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool pulse crop trader.
Donkersgoed said stocks of chickpeas are tight and supplies of yellow and green peas are shrinking as well.
“We’re not going to have a problem with burdensome carry-out stocks.”
New-crop sales are also strong.
Chidwick said 70 percent of the estimated 3.6 million acres of peas that farmers seeded this spring are yellow peas, which is a good thing with India buying so much crop.
“With yellow peas it’s probably easier to achieve an edible pea than it is with greens.”
