Tony Kaminski remembers the heyday of Saskatchewan’s annual Pulse Days conference, when the meeting room was so packed organizers had to set up television monitors in the hallway to accommodate the spillover audience.
“You couldn’t even get in the room there were so many people wanting to attend it,” said the Moose Jaw farmer.
Producers were stacked on the stairwell at the back of the Saskatoon’s Inn’s largest conference room and tucked away in dark recesses with no sight lines to the speaker’s podium.
But in 2007 there wasn’t a bad seat in the house.
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“They haven’t got many chairs and they are half empty. That says something to me,” said Kaminski Jan. 8 during the two-day conference.
“Obviously the farmer is putting lentils and pulses aside because he is not seeing the profitability in the product. You show a farmer where he can make money, he’s going to be there.”
When Kaminski compares the price of lentils to a crop like canola or oats, it’s a no-brainer what he will be seeding in spring.
Last year he grew a quarter section of oats that generated $400 per acre of revenue. Canola is fetching $8-$9 per bushel. Meanwhile, red lentil prices are languishing around 14 cents per pound.
Farmers have made good money growing lentils in the past but if buyers don’t raise their prices in a hurry, growers are going to drop acreage in a big way. Kaminski said the price for reds needs to rise to 18-20 cents per lb. if the lentil trade wants to maintain its acreage.
Saskatchewan Pulse Growers executive director Garth Patterson said there is no denying that attendance was down from the previous two-day high of 1,700 participants set in 2001, when chickpeas were a hot commodity.
But the 950 people who attended this year’s show rank as the fourth largest Pulse Days attendance ever. Attendance was actually up from the previous two years.
Patterson said it may have looked sparse at the Saskatoon Inn because there were more growers than usual watching a live video feed across the city at the trade show at Prairieland Park.
And he pointed out that if growers drop lentil acreage as dramatically as some are threatening, lentil prices will rise and so will attendance for Pulse Days 2008.
But that isn’t his overriding concern.
“It is nice to have lots of people at conferences. It looks good. But in the end that is not as important as profitability,” said Patterson.
Increasing profitability in the green lentil sector has become one of the major new thrusts for Saskatchewan Pulse Growers.
The association commissioned a study unveiled at Pulse Days 2007 that recommends producers consider taking some sort of collective action to exploit Canada’s market dominance by lowering or restricting green lentil supplies.
“The report looks at the confusing price signals at the grower level that often result in boom and bust cycles and whether it is possible to lower price risk for producers and processors,” said Patterson.
If the association is successful in smoothing out the cyclical nature of the lentil sector, it can probably count on a more reliable Pulse Days crowd.
In the meantime, Patterson issued a warning to customers to send some strong price signals before spring if they want a continued supply of lentils from the country that is responsible for 80 percent of the crop’s world trade.
“I hope international buyers realize that they may be scrambling in fall of 2007.”
