Canada continues to import U.S. lentils

American lentils are pouring across the border into Canada.

Canada accounted for 41 percent of all lentil exports from the United States in 2022-23 and 50 percent of shipments so far in 2023-24, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Vegetables and Pulses Outlook: December 2023 report.

That amounted to 76,000 tonnes last year and another 44,000 tonnes through the first four months of the current marketing campaign (July – October).

“The numbers are kind of skewed because a lot of those (U.S. exports) are probably not going into Canada, they’re just going through Canada,” said Jeff Van Pevenage, president of Columbia Grain, a large exporter of the product.

He said shipments through Canada used to occur because U.S. exporters were dodging the extra 10 percent import tariff they would normally have to pay when shipping lentils to the Indian market.

“That probably happened up until about four or five months ago,” said Van Pevenage.

That is when India dropped all import tariffs on lentils, including U.S. lentils.

But U.S. lentils are still flowing across the border because of preferable rail freight rates in Canada.

In the pre-COVID era, it was cheaper to ship U.S. lentils through the Port of Tacoma in the state of Washington.

“That has kind of shifted,” he said.

“There are better rates out of Vancouver and there are better rates out of Montreal.”

Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s rail rates going east and west in the U.S. are 33 percent higher than the rates are in Canada, Van Pevenage said.

U.S. processors are loading containers of lentils in Montana and shipping them north to Saskatchewan for transport to Vancouver or Montreal.