October 1, 2026
Marlene Boersch joined us to talk through Canada's smaller pea and lentil harvest and its ripple effects across the global pulse trade. We discussed a weather-disrupted season, why the market's oversupply fears may be overdone, and the pressure canola and wheat prices could put on next year's pulse acres.
On pea production, the common wisdom, and I agree with it, is 3.2 MMT this year. Last year we had 3.8 MMT, so certainly a reduction on the pea side. For lentils, I would put production at 2.4 MMT, which is close to what StatCan has. That's down from 3.3 MMT last year — a 27% reduction.
What I have found hard to verify is where some of the acres were, particularly for lentils. If you're looking for 4 million acres, you expect to see a lot of fields. I took a trip through the traditional areas, and there were clearly fewer acres because we have soil-borne disease problems. That's a ticking time bomb that will hit us one of these years. The acres had also moved east a little.
We have reduced our lentil acres for greens by quite a bit. In my books, we had a 19% increase in red lentils and a 36% reduction in green lentils. But most of the carryout is in greens.
StatCan's stocks report had lentils at 1.28 MMT. That number is too high. Mine is more like 945 KMT — people in the trade have agreed with me that it isn't as high as StatCan reports.
On peas, they were at 1.8 MMT of carryout, but that's probably closer to 800 KMT.
Added up, that puts our available supply not too far away from last year. On peas, we are at 2.6 MMT against 2.7 MMT last year. On lentils, supply is 3.4 MMT versus 3.8 MMT last year.
You also have to overlay that with the global numbers. For the major global pea exporters, I'm only at 13.3 MMT of production versus 14.9 MMT last year. Even adding some higher ending stocks, we're still less supplied than last year.
For the major lentil producers, I have 7.2 MMT for 2026 versus 7.9 MMT last year, a 9% reduction. If you put in about 1.5 MMT of carryout between Canada and Australia, this year’s really not all that different in terms of supply. So, when people spent a lot of time this summer talking about carryout and oversupply, I'm not on the same page. On pea stocks, I don't think we can draw down the entirety of our carryout, but we'll certainly reduce it to around half.
Red lentils account for a larger share of Canada’s 2026 lentil acreage, with production estimated at 2.4 MMT overall, down 27% from last year.
On demand, I'm fairly optimistic. We live in a world of high inflation and very high food costs, and in Southeast Asia that will matter greatly. What are they going to eat for protein? It would be very hard to see a reduction in overall demand.
On price, there's a very Canadian aspect. Going into the fall, farmers have to decide what they're going to grow next year, and we have very good prices for canola. You can easily get $18.50 a bushel right now and forward prices at similar levels for next year. We've also seen increases in wheat prices. Those will depend on what's happening between Russia and Ukraine and the ports there, but right now a lot of production is out of circulation because they cannot ship as usual, and I have trouble seeing those prices deflate.
That's competition, particularly for lentil acres. If our trade wants to attract acres for next year, it cannot go down in price. It will have to bring prices up to get anywhere close to the return per acre of those crops. Production costs are very high and farmers are squeezed: diesel, fertilizer, machinery. An average combine is over CAD 1 million now. They will follow rotation to some degree, but they will also tweak it for return per acre to make ends meet. So you need almost a lift in price relative to other commodities.
It's been a very difficult harvest, there's no question. We had a very good start to the season. It was wet, and we always like water because a lot of the Prairies are semi-arid. But it forced seeding back in most areas, so we had a late start. That can be critical, because you talk about 100 growing days and you have to fit everything in. Over the last 10 years, the fall seems to have shifted back. It's the end of September and we still have temperatures in the 20s. So I wasn't so worried about it coming in late.
Then July was relatively hot and quite dry. When it gets hot during flowering, the plants can abort the flowers, but everything looked really quite good. I did a crop trip in July and thought it was one of the best crops I had ever seen.
In September, we had what I called monsoon-like rains, very heavy, and that really affected harvesting. Lentils and peas are among the first things to come off, so I would say about 95% were already harvested. The one crop that rains did hit very heavily were the chickpeas in southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta. They’re maybe 50% to 60% harvested, and people say at least a third of that crop is feed quality because the rain packed it down onto the soil and there are blemishes on the seeds. About a third came off before the rains and is really good quality, with yields of around 1,900 lb/acre, which is above average. The rest will be blended or go into feed markets, maybe pet food.
The weather was never settled, and I found it very hard to assess yields. Unusually, my yields were slightly smaller than StatCan's.
With the wet periods, I was convinced we would see disease flare up in the lentils, and it didn't happen. The ecologists I talked to at the Halifax meeting couldn't understand why it wasn't a bigger problem either. Farmers spent a lot on fungicides this year, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.
Most of our pulses are exportable. Red lentils are certainly No. 2 or better, which is very good news, since they all trade at that level. Most large and small green lentils are also No. 2 or better. Given the questions about the pigeon pea crop in India, where green lentils go as a substitute, there wouldn't be a problem exporting extra No. 3s either.
Between China and India, they take about 70% of our pea exports. In terms of total pea exports, I have 2.55 MMT, which is very close to the 2.7 MMT we did this year. I'm not super aggressive on my numbers, and we might be able to do a little more.
The shipping costs are a problem. Freight is very expensive right now, and that's a problem for the receiving countries. When we talk about demand, how much they can afford to pay is an aspect, and that would be the one thing against very good demand. People buy hand to mouth, but that's difficult because it's hard to book the freight.
In some sense, it would hurt smaller buyers. For us, the reason we ship a lot of bulk is that we have an advantage shipping off the West Coast into Asia in terms of voyage length.
Canada’s pulse exports benefit from its West Coast position, giving shippers an advantage on voyage length into major Asian markets such as China and India.
It was not until March that we even started shipping anything to China. And yet in the 2025/26 crop year, we did 800 KMT to them. Once they opened up, we had some very good shipping months and caught up.
Our relationship with them has much improved. Our Prime Minister has visited and seems to have warmed things up, and I don't expect any problems coming up. Having said that, I can't predict either Trump or Xi. I'm assuming we'll do between 700 KMT and 800 KMT again next year, knowing that Russia, our main competition into China, will do its very best to ship by rail. But Chinese buyers do prefer our quality for vermicelli noodles. I wouldn't expect to send a pound of Canadian peas for feed, but I do expect sizable tonnage for manufacturing.
Kazakhstan shipped some lentils into China last year for the first time, so they have a phytosanitary protocol. There is no doubt in my mind that China has pursued a very aggressive policy of diversification. When they saw we did 97% of the peas into China, they said that will stop. That will persist, and into China there will certainly be competition for us.
As it is right now, we can export our crops, but we don't know where it's going. In theory, we are renegotiating our free trade agreement, and we walked away from the negotiations because they had demands we didn't think we could fulfil. I can't tell you when this will be picked up again. Everybody's on tenterhooks, and I don't see any way to predict it.
On peas, the USA is not unimportant. Last year we did 175 KMT to them. I have a smaller tonnage for next year, 100 KMT in the budget, because a lot of that went into their food aid programmes as split peas into food banks, and that business has been reduced from the American side. Because it's our only land border, it makes sense that some of these things go across the border, and I'm assuming that will continue.
Last time I looked, the monsoon was still about 15% behind normal, and they expect it to affect the rabi crops, which are very important to us. I expect quite good demand from India, and the feedback from India at the recent Halifax meetings corroborated that. They give very good support payments for pulses, but it's the smaller farms that grow the bulk of them, so as soon as there's a weather problem or a short monsoon, it shows in production. They have very good results on wheat and some of the major crops, but not so positive on lentils. They will certainly not reach their targets.
India also has some concern about its own chickpea production because of the monsoon, and Australia has roughly 1 MMT of chickpeas versus just over 2 MMT last year. The next cheapest protein is yellow peas. Last year we did 755 KMT of peas and 843 KMT of lentils to India, and in my S&D, I have 850 KMT of peas to India this year. It supports both the red and the green lentil market; otherwise, on greens, you're restricted to South America and Europe.
Russia is there with peas for India also, but unlike with China, they can't rail them to India, and with the Black Sea ports the way they are, they're hamstrung. That only plays in favour of the other shippers, of which Canada is a major one.
Canada pulses / pulse exports / lentil market / pea market / Canadian agriculture / global pulse trade.
Disclaimer: The opinions or views expressed in this publication are those of the authors or quoted persons. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Global Pulse Confederation or its members.
