As expected, Canadian stocks of both peas and lentils were down sharply at the end of the 2019-20 crop year.
Amid strong export demand, total stocks of dry peas were down 25% from a year earlier to 234,100 tonnes as of July 31, according to a Statistics Canada grain stocks report released Friday. Meanwhile, lentil stocks fell even more sharply, plummeting almost 92% from the previous year to just 61,000 tonnes, StatsCan reported.
For peas, the decline in July 31 stocks comes despite the fact total 2019-20 supplies were above the year earlier level and domestic use was lower. However, exports jumped more than 17% to 3.8 million tonnes, mostly thanks to China which increased its imports of Canadian dry peas by approximately 75%. Both on-farm stocks (-26.7% to 96,000 tonnes) and commercial stocks (-24.3% to 137,200 tonnes) of dry peas were down from the previous year.
StatsCan’s July 31 dry pea stocks estimate is even below Agriculture Canada’s latest forecast of 250,000 tonnes in August.
As with peas, the drop in 2019-20 lentil ending stocks was driven by stronger exports in 2019-20, up more than one-third from the previous year as exports to three of Canada's largest markets — India, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates — all rose year over year.
In its August supply-demand estimates, Ag Canada had lentil stocks falling even more precipitously, down to only 25,000 tonnes.
???????Flax stocks as of July 31 were estimated by StatsCan at 64,000 tonnes, down just 4,000 from the previous year but well below the July 2018 level of 127,000.
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