“Desis have definitely been the hot commodity this year!”/
A full roundup of Australia’s record-breaking crop

On Australian desi chickpeas

• Desi prices picked up ahead of an expectation that India would reduce its tariff, which is why we had such a big crop.

• The ABARES estimate for the chickpea crop was around 1.9 MMT, but a lot of people think it was slightly higher – around 2 MMT or a little bit more. In my opinion, yields were about 2 MT/ha spread across 1 million ha.

• I think that between half and two thirds of the entire crop has already been exported. That would mean that between October and now, Australia has exported between 1-1.3 MMT, leaving around 700 KMT left of export.

• The huge exporting program tied up lots of trucks and sent road freight prices up between 60-70% – it was absolute chaos! As the harvest continued southward and price of the desis went down, selling sped up and it left many people with high-price forward contracts they needed to export in time.

• Things have eased off now, as desi exports are largely behind us. There will still be a few more bulk vessels to go out, but the intense period from October to now is over and the harvest is finished. The sorghum crop coming up soon will start to make things busy again, I'm sure.