New crop contract bids for lentils are profitable—but with good prices available for several crops—there is a competition for acres.

Marlene Boersch with Mercantile Consulting Venture provided the lentil market outlook during the on-line CropSphere earlier this week. She says early new crop contracts are being offered at 25 cents a pound for red lentils and 28 cents for large greens.

“These are actually quite decent prices, but I would wait with booking them to see how we are doing in the jockeying for acres,” Boersch said. “The question that I have ‘are these enough compared to canola and wheat’, now that we have received another shot in the arm with the USDA report,”

The US Department of Agriculture crops and stocks report was very bullish for soybean, corn and wheat. It also provided support for other crops such as canola, spring wheat and feed barley.

Boersch says wheat could become a bigger competitor for lentils acres because she believes the wheat market has potential to move higher before spring.

(CJWW)