Tightening supplies likely to underpin chickpea market

MarketsFarm — Tightening worldwide chickpea supplies could bode well for prices later this year, although Canadian acres will likely be down and there’s still a long growing season ahead.

Canadian farmers intend to seed 175,200 acres of chickpeas in 2022, which would be down 5.5 per cent from the previous year and the smallest acreage base since 2017, according to Statistics Canada data.

Actual seeded area could be even lower, due to good returns for competing crops and a late start to spring seeding in key chickpea-growing regions, said Colin Young of Mid-West Grain at Moose Jaw, Sask. He expected area would also be lower in other growing regions, including the U.S. and Argentina.

Chickpeas are harder to turn into cash compared to other crops, likely dissuading some area, said Young. He described himself as “the most pro-chickpea guy in Western Canada,” as Mid-West is a large buyer of the crop. However, he wasn’t seeding chickpeas on his own farm this year, as other cropping options pencilled out more favourably.

The chickpea market was lacking demand back in February, with kabuli prices dropping below 40 cents per pound. Prices have improved since then, with top-end bids touching 50 cents per bushel, according to Prairie Ag Hotwire data.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked the rally in chickpeas, as both countries are players in the global market. Young expected Russian chickpeas would still find their way out of the country, but financing issues remain in question and the availability of Black Sea-origin chickpeas in the upcoming marketing year will be constrained.

“The pipelines are running low, there won’t be cheap options from Ukraine and Russia,” Young said, adding “chickpea stocks are tight, there’s no two ways about it.”

However, what end-users will be willing to pay remains to be seen.

Chickpea seeding is already underway in the dry regions of southern Alberta, but not much has gone in the ground in Saskatchewan — where the bulk of Canada’s chickpeas are typically grown.

The cool and wet spring weather causing the delays would be good from a moisture standpoint in the long run, Young said, noting it was still far too early in the season to either write the crop off or call it a bumper crop.

This year, there’s a high probability of whatever chickpeas are harvested being quite valuable, with a much smaller chance of overproduction, according to Young.

Farmers, he said, are generally “pessimistic by our vocabulary, but we’re optimistic by our actions.”

— Phil Franz-Warkentin reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.