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India's drought a bonanza for Canadian pulse growers

Posted by Flaman Agriculture Oct 15, 2015

Winnipeg/Mumbai | Reuters — Prices for Canadian pulses typically ease toward the end of the year but a recent dry spell in distant India, the world’s top producer and consumer, is driving them up.
Back-to-back drought years for the first time in three decades has eroded India’s output of pulses and boosted imports. Global prices of chickpeas, yellow peas and lentils have as a result hit record highs in what is a windfall for farmers in Canada, Australia, Russia, Myanmar and the U.S..
Lee Moats, who farms near Riceton, southeast of Regina, said he was selling red lentils for 50 per cent more than a year ago, and was holding back crops in the hope that prices will climb higher.
“India is a very large pulse importer, and there is a shortfall, and that’s where Canada comes in,” he said.
Canada is the top supplier of pulses to the Asian country, which is expected to import one million tonnes more this year.
Bids to buy Canadian red lentils and yellow peas are far higher than normal for this time of the year, typically a period when prices ease with new supplies, said Chuck Penner, analyst at LeftField Commodity Research in Winnipeg.
Prices should get a further boost with Canada’s 2015 pea output projected, by Statistics Canada, to drop 17 per cent from a year ago to 3.16 million tonnes. Exports from Aug. 1 to Oct. 4 rose five per cent to 906,000 tonnes, data from the Canadian Grain Commission shows.
“Things are going to get even tighter… We are going to have to hit the brakes hard in terms of what we can supply to India,” Penner said.
India’s appetite
Pulses are a key source of protein in India, which has been struggling to increase its output to meet local demand.
Imports could rise to 5.5 million tonnes this year, said Nitin Kalantri, a miller from the state of Maharashtra. This would cost India $4.5 billion, versus the $2.6 billion it spent to import 4.5 million tonnes in the year ended March, he added (all figures US$).
India, which consumes nearly 22 million tonnes of pulses annually, sources yellow peas and lentils mainly from Canada and the U.S., chickpeas from Australia and Russia, and green gram and pigeon peas from Myanmar.
This year, India suffered a poor summer harvest and there are worries the drought will hit winter-sown chickpea after growing regions received as much as 40 per cent less rainfall.
Canadian farmers are likely to plant more pulses next spring, assuming they will provide better returns than grains and canola, said Darren Lemieux, head trader for Simpson Seeds, a special crops processor and exporter at Moose Jaw, Sask.
— Rod Nickel and Rajendra Jadhav report for Reuters from Winnipeg and Mumbai respectively.
 
Posted in Farm related news | Tagged with lentils peas pulse crops India | More articles by Flaman Agriculture

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