Desi Chickpeas?

[Jagfarms]

What about Desi Chickpea's anybody thinking of seeding any of them? We have some some desi's left from a few years back and we were thinking of seeding a few acres of them. What is your opinions the Desi market?

How many Kabuli acres do you think will go in this year? I thinking around 300,000 acres. It is hard finding good seed right now and to know what variety to grow. I was looking for some Frontier seed but it is all sold out at 75cents/lb. I found some Xena seed and I can get some Yuma's so now I have to decide if I do seed any which to go with. I can get the Yuma's a lot cheaper and they are more disease resistant but I heard from some people they are harder to market and lots of times they downgrade because of splits.

I thinking it could be a year to late for the Kabuli market what are your opinions? There is some new crop price contracts out for 10mm Kabulis at 35cents/lb for the first 5 bushels an acre for #1s. The only trouble is we have to grow #1's first.


Jason

[jluimes]

What kind of yeild can you get on Desi Chickpeas? We grew Evans Kabuli type last year and had disease problems. Sold them as Max 5% at 0.28 per pound. With all the hype on chickpeas this spring it is likely the seed growers just pocketed all the profit to be had on chickpeas this year. Since Desi's seem to be the ignored part of the market it may just be the part that is actually profitable this year. With the cost of growing Kabuli's we need 0.40 on the 10mm.

[Jagfarms]

we have grown desi's in the past and we have yields from 5 bu/acre in the drought years to 40 bu/acre in 1999 when we had 22 inches of rain. On an average year I would say they yield around 25 to 30 bu/acre in the brown soil zone. The price has been sitting at 9 to 12 cents or a pound for the last 3 years but there was times it was over 20 cents a pound. There was a couple of years we could not even give them away so it kind of makes me wonder if we should try them again.


I need to seed something we can sell this year. We have bins full of product that we cannot sell now so we do not need any more. With input price of Kabuli's I would need to sell them as soon as possible to get some cashflow. We have 3 bins of #2 large green lentils and 6 bins of maple peas that we would like to sell but it is hard to market and the price is so low for them now. The lentils I am worried about as they downgrade in the bin but I am hoping the Maple peas will store good for a while. With this bird flu I do not imagine the demand will pick up any time to soon for maple peas. It looks like they follow the same market as canary seed.

[jluimes]

We had no trouble moving the chickpeas just before Christmas. Net yeild was 21 bu/ac. The quality prevented us from getting the best price. The other problem was high seed cost. Hopefully we will get seed quality this year.

[charliep]

Will leave market forecasts to others.

Comments.

Desi chickeas are a larger world market than kabulis. Price is set outside Canada whereas there has been less production/closer markets for kabulis. Likely a closer relationship with small chickpeas (7 mm). Whatever happened to the B-90 and Chicos? Yellow peas have been highly substitutable into desi markets.

Darker seed coat mean (plus having the seed coat removed to make products like humus) means easy grading than kabulis. The problem is high tannins and a poor fit into livestock feed markets (bitter tasting to pigs so don't like) if you don't make grade.

I would throw low tannin fababeans into the decision mix when considering pulses. Lots of experience Edmonton area. What about Saskatchewan/Manitoba?

[sawfly]

i have been thinking desis too. in part because canola so far looks like no return. So i will cut acres there.
N prices add up to a lot of coin to lay out, only to break even. I have to get back to pulses in rotation , so I bought some peas for seed. ( too much wheat on wheat) AND MAYBE SOMETING ELSE desis or fababeans?

have got good land for wheat/canola and some crap sand that i dont know what to do with. Some pulse that likes a desert? I think the desis would end up on decent land. any suggestions for the sand ?

[clancey]

Desis are a one market item. While there are concerns about production in Pakistan, the same is not true of India, which is the primary buyer.

Also, with field peas as cheap as they are, Indian importers will focus on that for their bulk purchases, taking only small quantities of desis. To sell large quantities, the price needs to be VERY low.

Incidentaly, peas are not really substituted for desi chickpeas. What we really see is that demand on the Indian subcontinent is extremely price sensitive.

When we are stretching our money, we buy lower octane gas or take our holiday closer to home. When they stretch their money, they buy cheap until they need to eat less.

It may also be the case that when pulse production is up in India, import demand may rise, especially for higher valued pulses. Women have more money to spend on food and can afford to expand dietary choices. When production goes down, they have lkess money and buy cheap until they need to buy less.