Impressive market shares

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has published a statistical overview of the Canadian pulse and specialty crop industries. On a number of commodities, Canada dominates world trade. Based on data from 2008, Canada’s share of world dry pea exports is an impressive 54 per cent. The next largest pea exporter is the U.S. at 16per cent of the world market. Our biggest customer by far for peas is India. Canada has 68 per cent of the world trade in lentils and by far the biggest export destination is Turkey. By comparison, the U.S. has only 10 per cent of the lentil export market. In canaryseed, Canada accounts for 83 per cent of world exports. The next biggest exporter is Belgium followed by Argentina and Hungary. Mexico and Brazil are our two biggest customers for canaryseed. Canada’s share of world mustard seed exports is 51 per cent. The other significant exporters include Germany, India, Netherlands and Ukraine. The United States is the biggest customer for our mustard followed by Belgium and Germany. When you add up Canadian sales of lentils, peas, mustard and canaryseed for 2008, the total comes to $1.9 billion. Most of that comes from Saskatchewan. I’m Kevin Hursh.