With monsoon playing truant and posing a question mark on the yield of pulses in the kharif season, Canada is positioning itself to meet India’s growing demand for lentils (masoor) and yellow peas (pili matar) grown in abundance in its Saskatchewan province.
Millers and traders from India made a beeline to the Pulse and Special Crops Convention held at Saskatoon in Canada recently and met with growers and exporters ahead of the festival season — beginning with Eid-ul-Fitr later this month and continuing till Deepavali in October when the demand for pulses is set to increase.
Even though the actual yield of kharif crop will be known only by September-end, agriculture experts are not hopeful of matching the 6 million tonnes of pulses harvested last year.
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According to sources in the Indian Pulses and Grains Association, the country produced around 7.50 lakh tonnes of lentils last year, but imported 4 lakh tonnes. Similarly, almost the entire requirement of 1.5 million tonnes of yellow peas was imported as indigenous production was negligible.
India, which is the world’s largest producer and consumer of pulses, also imports about 3.5 million tonnes of pulses every year from the U.S., Australia, Myanmar, East Africa and Ukraine, besides Canada.
About a quarter to a third of all pulses imported come from Canada. “Saskatchewan province in Canada has a population of little over one million and a cultivated farmland area of 18.2 million hectares, but accounts for 65 per cent of the world’s lentil exports and 54 per cent of the world’s pea exports,” said Adam Smith, an official from the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of Saskatchewan, Canada.
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Murad Al Katib, President of Canada Special Crops Association (CSCA), said “India imported more than one million tonnes of lentils and yellow peas from Canada last year. Though China overtook India in import of pulses last year, India continues to be one of our biggest markets for pulses. Of late, China has started extracting starch from yellow peas to manufacture noodles.”
Pulses traders from India, however, remained anxious over the inability of railways in Canada to transport the contracted produce to the port in Vancouver. Though Canadian Agriculture Ministry officials admitted that the rail service was hit on various counts they said the railways was back on track, clearing its commitments.
“It takes anywhere between two months and four months for commodities to reach India from Vancouver port through ocean freight”, said Kevin Price, Trading Manager of Agrocorp International, a Singapore-headquartered company engaged in shipping commodities to India from Canada.
(The correspondent was in Canada at the invitation of the High Commission of Canada in India)