India removes tariffs on Canadian lentils

Mar 03, 2022

The tariff rate will remain zero until at least Sept. 30

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Canadian lentils will have free access to a major overseas market, at least temporarily.

On Feb. 12, India’s Ministry of Finance announced it is removing tariffs on all lentil imports and will revisit its stance on Sept. 30.

Prior to the notice, Canadian lentils entering India faced an 11 per cent tariffs.

The only country not to have its tariffs removed is the U.S. Lentils from the U.S. will still face a 22 per cent tariff.

India first placed tariffs of 33 per cent on both lentils and chickpeas in 2017 and have made multiple changes to its policy over the years.

Abrupt amendments in India’s tariff requirements is par for the course, said Mac Ross, director of market access and trade policy for Pulse Canada.

“It’s been this way for a number of years now where there’s been a lack of transparency and predictability as to when and why India will be revising their trade policies,” he told Farms.com. “We’ve been advocating for a long time for India to publish long-term guidance about how their trade policies are going to change.”

As far as why India is reducing the tariffs now, the price of food could be a main issue.

The move “is meant to address food price inflation concerns,” said Moe Agostino, chief commodity strategist with Farms.com Risk Management.

India’s labour ministry stated food inflation in January was at 6.22 per cent compared to 2.38 per cent in January 2021.

Politics could also at play.

India is scheduled to have multiple elections this year.

“Important state elections are happening this year and food affordability is always an important topic,” Ross said. “That’s probably another reason why we’re seeing this tariff drop.”

The Canadian lentil industry likely won’t experience significant gains during this low-tariff window.

India’s farmers are preparing for lentil harvest and the ministry of agriculture projected a harvest of 1.58 million tonnes. If achieved, this volume would be slightly below the country’s record of 1.62 million tonnes in 2018.

“Any additional imports will be fairly modest if anything,” Ross said. “Maybe we see more of a decline in the destination price in India, but it’s unlikely we’ll see any impact at the farm gate in Canada.”

Pulse Canada continues to look for additional markets for pulse crops.

The organization’s “25 by 2025” strategy aims to have 25 per cent of Canadian pulse production utilized in new market and use categories by 2025.

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”