SASKATOON — American lentils are pouring across the border into Canada.
Canada accounted for 41 percent of all lentil exports from the United States in 2022-23 and 50 percent of shipments so far in 2023-24, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Vegetables and Pulses Outlook: December 2023 report.
That amounted to 76,000 tonnes last year and another 44,000 tonnes through the first four months of the current marketing campaign (July – October).
“The numbers are kind of skewed because a lot of those (U.S. exports) are probably not going into Canada, they’re just going through Canada,” said Jeff Van Pevenage, president of Columbia Grain, a large exporter of the product.
He said shipments through Canada used to occur because U.S. exporters were dodging the extra 10 percent import tariff they would normally have to pay when shipping lentils to the Indian market.
“That probably happened up until about four or five months ago,” said Van Pevenage.
That is when India dropped all import tariffs on lentils, including U.S. lentils.
But U.S. lentils are still flowing across the border because of preferable rail freight rates in Canada.
In the pre-COVID era, it was cheaper to ship U.S. lentils through the Port of Tacoma in the state of Washington.
“That has kind of shifted,” he said.
“There are better rates out of Vancouver and there are better rates out of Montreal.”
Burlington Northern Santa Fe’s rail rates going east and west in the U.S. are 33 percent higher than the rates are in Canada, Van Pevenage said.
U.S. processors are loading containers of lentils in Montana and shipping them north to Saskatchewan for transport to Vancouver or Montreal.
The math that works for peas and lentils does not work for a crop like wheat because Canadian wheat sells for cheaper than U.S. wheat, he said.
Van Pevenage said it is U.S. green lentils that are being re-exported through Canada. Medium greens account for 75 percent of U.S. production. The reds that are grown in the U.S. are sold domestically.
Processors are paid US$1,400 per tonne for their red lentils by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) versus getting $780 per tonne from India.
Other markets that purchase U.S. lentils include Mexico, Spain, Sudan and Colombia.
Canada is also a major importer of U.S. peas, ranking second behind Ethiopia in 2022-23 and second behind China so far in 2023-24.
The imported volumes are small at 10,000 tonnes last year and 26,000 tonnes through the first four months of this year.
Other destinations include Yemen, China and the Philippines.
The U.S. primarily exports split and whole green peas.
Average monthly grower prices for U.S. lentils were up 23 percent through the first four months of 2023-24. The USDA expects prices to increase even more later in 2023-24 because of a reduction in global supplies of the crop and a strong U.S. export program.
Pea prices were down 11 percent so far in 2023-24. The drop is due to elevated U.S. production. Farmers produced 779,180 tonnes of the crop, a 14 percent increase over last year.
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