The escalating war between Russia and Ukraine will likely improve the prospects for Canadian pulse crop exports, according to Chuck Penner with Left Field Commodity Research.
Penner was a guest on the September 10 edition of a Saskatchewan Pulse Growers podcast called "Pulse on the Prairies".
He said in recent years, Russia has been selling more peas to China and India, but attacks at port positions are making it more difficult to get those peas to market.
"They grew a smaller pea crop again this year, but they also are having trouble shipping that out and their customers are India and China, just like ours are, and so if they can't ship to China and India, those countries need to come to Canada."
Lentil prospects are also promising due to a less than stellar pigeon pea crop in India and a smaller lentil crop in Russia and Kazakhstan, which again could result in India having to import more from Canada, Penner said.
However, one mitigating factor could be a large red lentil crop in Australia that will be harvested in a few weeks.
Penner says the outlook for chickpeas is decent as well.
" The U.S. is one of our big buyers, but so is Pakistan. They often compete for first and second tier in our customer base. So Pakistan is a big buyer and they buy mostly from Russia and from Australia. So they'll buy Desi chickpeas from Australia, but they'll buy small caliber Kabulis from Russia," he explained.
"And so again, if Russia is having trouble shipping chickpeas to Pakistan, then again, does that push even more demand to Canada? So, even on chickpeas, there's a friendly story there and the U.S. crop is smaller this year. So both of our major customers look like they could be buying more. So if last year was a record export year, this year could even be more of a record year."
Another factor is the quality of pulse crops coming out of this season's harvest.
In Saskatchewan, crop yield and quality vary across the province due to variable rainfall totals throughout the growing season.
(With files from Neil Billinger, CJWW)
