Lentil price forecast

How many acres of lentils will we harvest in Western Canada this year? What will the total production be? Looking at Canada and the world, what are lentil prices likely to do? The latest Pulse Market Report from Saskatchewan Pulse Growers addresses those questions, but there’s another new report most growers won’t have seen that does a really good job of analyzing the lentil market. That report is from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and while government documents are often long on words and short on conclusions, this one impressed me. It pegs our harvested area at 2.8 million acres. That’s up from last year’s 2.3 million acres, but it’s a lot lower than the intended acreage due the moisture problems this spring. The Ag Canada analysis assumes lower lentil yields this year, so total production is expected to decline on large green lentils while increasing modestly on red lentils. Most interesting is that the report includes price projections. The average producer price in the last crop year for the top grade of large green lentils is pegged at 34 cents a pound. The price forecast for this new crop year is 29 cents. On small green lentils, the price last year averaged 28 cents a pound. A price of 25 cents is expected this year. The red lentil price last year averaged 30 cents. The forecast price for this crop year is 26 cents. I’m Kevin Hursh.

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