Could 2024/25 see a shift away from grains to pulses?/
Brian Clancey’s perspective on global markets

Your work at StatPub allows you to get a real bird’s eye view of the pulse trade, so let’s cover a few different topics. Firstly, tell us how you see this year panning out in terms of pulse acreage/production.

Looking at the data I'm not seeing dramatic changes. We are probably going to see peas down and global lentils up. There isn't much change globally in dry edible beans or for desi chickpeas, but kabuli chickpea production could be up a little bit despite a lower area, provided that yields stay at their recent averages. Overall it looks like net exporting countries may see a decline in pulse production, but net importing countries could see increased internal production and consumption.

We have to wait and see how production materializes, but I think yields overall in North America are going to be up. In Europe I'm not so sure because they have weather concerns, but India is optimistic about its coming kharif crop. There is disagreement about whether there will be a normal or below-normal monsoon, so we’ll have to see how that plays out.

How is India's pulse market looking this year?

The summer seeding for pulses is up over last year’s, but not by a wide margin. It might end up being similar to last year, but it's a couple of million hectares – and that's mostly mung beans, if I recall correctly. Shortly we’ll be into the kharif reseeding – that's mainly pigeon peas, but it's a very long season crop that can be up to 6 months for some varieties. They also do a lot of intercropping with that – India makes very good use of their land!

The Rabi season crop depends greatly on the monsoons, but it is principally lentils, chickpeas, and peas. Pea acreage has been growing recently and lentils are going to be important, but we’ll have to wait and see how growers respond to this year's prices. With Desi chickpea prices below normal, farmers are getting bids below their minimum support price so we don't know how much influence that will have. It may affect the Rabi season pulse area should farmers decide to go more into wheat and oilseeds. 

“[Indian] Pea acreage has been growing recently and lentils are going to be important, but we’ll have to wait and see how growers respond to this year's prices.”

What's your read on global sales and price changes for pulses this year?

At the moment I would expect that pulse trading levels for exporting countries ought to be lower on average than last year because of improving supplies. This may not be the case for lentils, as lentil supplies in North America are looking fairly tight and they are the primary supplier to the world. Peas are looking ample, so prices ought to be lower on average than was the case in recent years.

It should be steady as it goes for beans – there's a good amount of trade between Canada and the United States and into the UK for white beans, but beyond that, most bean production makes up a North American domestic market with Mexico being significant for the coloured beans. The rest of the global market in dry edible beans is more to do with pigeon peas or mung beans and data is hard to come by data for it, but the quantities involved are quite significant.

Some other markets like China and Russia are increasingly difficult to analyze. What can you tell us about the Chinese pulse market right now?

As far as I can tell they're not thinking about pulses because they're focusing more on grains and feed ingredients – rice, wheat, corn, soybeans – as they are the major imports. A lot of noodles and the starch they produce is made with locally cultivated pulses, but there is also a demand for starch from peas and things like that – that market is generally fed by imports.

I think the Chinese market has devolved for the last couple of years. We had huge penetration of yellow peas into the feed market, but that appears to have partly gone away because of high prices and a year of limited supply. They also have continuing disease problems in their hog sector. Competition with other ingredients in the feed sector is intense, so peas would need to come down in price in order to regain demand in that market. They may prefer corn, wheat, rice not suitable for human consumption, or soybean meal.

Sorghum is also an option for feed, and they're buying a lot of it apparently. They look at all the possible ingredients for feed and decide the mix they need in order to have the least input costs with the same nutritional profile. Pulses only come into that picture when they fit into that formula.

There is a base demand for peas for the starch and snack industries, that may be around 900,000 metric tons per year. Canada dominates that sector and the US participates from time to time. Australia doesn't grow enough peas to be a player there.

Does that base demand ever change?

There are some reasons that the base demand can change. If you think back to when India stopped imports of yellow peas, prices dropped and then China jumped in to buy them.

They always say that China is a vermicelli market – those types of noodles can be made with mung beans, potato starch or pea starch, and they all have somewhat different flavors, so they create niches. As the food fads move and shift in China and elsewhere, demand for the quantities of these pulses fluctuate for that reason too.

Could you talk to me about Russia's pulse trade through re-exporting countries like Turkey and the UAE?

Russia's doing increased business in that part of the world – they're not suffering in terms of sanctions. Where they sell has changed, but Russia's actually doing pretty well shipping into Turkey. When I look at the data, I don't see a lot of shift in Russian sales, Western European demand for Russian pulses and other products. Other things are being affected by the sanctions that have been placed on them, but food doesn't appear to be one of them.

We're just not getting good data out of Russia anymore. Since the war in Ukraine it's like everything just shut down – like the curtains were drawn on the country. Without good data on Russian exports it makes it hard to double-check people's ideas about production levels – some exporters are honest, and others just talk their positions and give data that is favorable to them. The reality is always somewhere in between.

How is the war in Ukraine continuing to affect import/export markets?

We know that Ukraine's production is going down and that has had a strong influence on global grain prices. At some point in time that's going to spread over into pulses and oilseeds, because as grain production increases in response to the current high values, prices will come down and pulses and oilseeds become more attractive. In 2024 or 2025, we could see a shift away from grains in some regions towards pulses and oilseeds – that could continue into 2026.

“In 2024 or 2025, we could see a shift away from grains in some regions towards pulses and oilseeds – that could continue into 2026.”

How big would you say the plant-based demand for peas is right now?

I try to look at things from a lot of different perspectives, and one thing I have observed about that market segment is that the dollar values are the wrong way to look at it, because the dollar values are highly inflated compared to the input value, like the peas that go into it, for example. When I was trying to come up with reasonable estimates about the quantity of yellow peas that were being used, it's quite small – not as significant in terms of raw ingredient volume as we would hope.

I’m being a little cynical about it, I suppose! It is another important market for pulses, of course – globally it's hundreds of thousands of metric tons of yellow peas, but it’s just not millions and millions.

Do you think yellow peas have the potential to move soy to one side in the plant-based industry and overtake it as the key ingredient?

I don't think you'll ever push soy to one side as once you start doing that you are going to get a lot of pushback from an industry that has billions and billions of dollars. 

I think it's better to approach this not as a competition between ingredients, but as a cooperation between ingredients to come up with better profiles and give consumers what they want – a cooperative approach across commodities is probably wiser. As soon as you turn into commodity versus commodity, then you're in trouble.

It looks as if Argentina is facing a drastic reduction of this year’s pulse crops. What repercussions could this have in the global pulse market?

The people who have to buy from Argentina will now need to look to Canada, the US, India, and Mexico. Mexico has also indicated its disappointment with its production levels.

Argentina's black beans are important for Brazil, and their white beans go to Turkey, Spain, Italy and those parts of the world. If their white bean production is down significantly, one would expect that creates an opportunity for Egypt, but it also may improve demand and buying interest in North American Great Northern beans – it's a smaller caliber white but it could be an option as you look through the prices and availability of beans.