Canadian pulse growers shouldn’t expect a tidal wave of demand stemming from tsunami aid heading to Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka.
Although Southeast Asia is the world’s leading pulse-consuming region, the crisis is expected to generate little if any additional exports of lentils, peas, beans and chickpeas, according to Canada’s largest private food aid organization.
“At this time we don’t have any immediate intentions of purchasing pulses for the tsunami relief,” said Heather Plett, director of resources and communications for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
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Most of the $1.3 million in relief provided by the organization has been spent on locally grown food.
One program will see 2,000 tonnes of rice distributed to affected areas on a food-for-work basis, which supports clean-up efforts such as removing silt from farmland.
Another will distribute 740 tonnes of rice, lentils, oil, sugar and salt to 20,000 people in 30 coastal villages in India.
The two programs will provide enough food to feed 50,000 families for a month, which Plett classified as a small-scale aid project.
While food shortages are a problem in some communities, more pressing concerns in the area include finding clean drinking water and homes for the millions of displaced people.
“The way this is looking, it is not primarily a food crisis,” Plett said.
As is the case with many disasters, victims’ needs will evolve over time, Plett said, which means Canadian pulses could yet be needed.
However, those in the trade say that volume is likely to be minimal.
Addressing a question asked at the market outlook session of Pulse Days 2005 in Saskatoon, Winnipeg pulse crop analyst Greg Kostal told growers not to expect a price-distorting surge in Canadian food aid.
“We’re typically talking tonnage that won’t change the supply and demand dynamics,” he said.
It is cheaper for food aid agencies to buy beans from Burma than bring in red lentils from Saskatchewan, especially with high ocean freight rates.
CGF Brokerage and Consulting of Saskatoon also addressed the issue in its weekly markets newsletter. The company said people in the tsunami-affected regions are large consumers of red lentils, beans, chickpeas and peas but they do not eat many green lentils.
The firm said beans and chickpeas are in short supply in North America and although peas are plentiful, dynamics within that crop will keep prices depressed.
“The only pulse commodity likely to feel any effect in price will be red lentils and in all honesty, that will probably not be much,” CGF said.
