Canadian farmers are in the early stages of planting the 2023 chickpea crop, with the market mostly holding steady ahead of new-crop harvests in other countries.
“The market is firm, it’s not going up or down,” said Jake Hansen, of Mid-West Grain in Moose Jaw, who noted a lack of both buying and selling. The rangebound trend is likely to continue until the there is a better sense of production in Russia and Turkey, he said.
Both countries are major chickpea growers, with harvests that come off before Canada’s. Turkey typically produces a good quality chickpea crop, while Russia’s quality can be more hit or miss. India is also a major world player in the world chickpea market, and anecdotal reports point to the recently harvested crop there having good yields, but not the best quality, Hansen said.
For now, buyers are waiting to see how many acres went in the ground in Turkey, and what the potential quality is, Hansen said. The country produced an estimated 580,000 tonnes of chickpeas in 2022, according to government data.