THE CURRENT cycle of high pulse prices will ensure at least some growers have their 2017 crop priced at historical highs.
Bids for the 2016-17 crop have reached dizzy heights, with values for Kabuli type chickpeas hitting $1650 a tonne, while Desi values have hovered around $1000/t.
And the strength in the old crop market has kept some heat in new crop values, in spite of expectations of a price correction during the year.
Prices for new crop range from $850/t for Desi types delivered to packers on the Darling Downs to $1000/t for Kabulis produced in Victoria.
Sanjiv Dubey, director with pulse exporter Graintrend, said the situation for new crop price trends would depend on a combination of factors both in Australia and in the Indian subcontinent, the destination for most Australian chickpeas.
“If we get another good season here in Australia and if there is a good monsoon on the subcontinent then there will be downward pressure on prices, but they are starting from very high levels,” he said.
Mr Dubey said solid demand from India and Pakistan had been behind the chickpea boom.
“Pakistan’s average crop is 700,000 tonnes, last year they only produced 225,000t, so there was a shortfall that had to be made up.”
Anthony Chapman, Wimmera Grain Company, said there was good interest in growing chickpeas in Victoria given the good prices on offer.
He said his company had new crop forward contracts at $1000/t for Kabulis and $780/t for Desis.
“There is interest from people who have not grown chickpeas for a long time, just because of how the numbers stack up compared to other crops.”
Mr Dubey said the market was in a transitional phase.
“It is difficult to find old crop for sale which is why the price remains so high and that in turn is keeping the new crop figure up.”
Chris Hood, director of Allora, Queensland, based packer GrainX said there was still old crop to be moved in the Queensland / northern NSW corridor.
“From a logistics point of view there are still chickpeas that need to be packed, things are still fairly busy, the fall out from the shortage of shipping containers is still being felt.”
Mr Dubey said some businesses were again offering hectare based contracts, which were popular among growers as they limited production risk.
However, Pete Johnson, Left Field Solutions, said farmers in northern NSW and south-west Queensland were not locking in contracts in as large a numbers as other years, in spite of the attractive numbers on offer.
“There’s been a lot less forward contracting than last year in that region and that is partly to do with the fear of production risk, but also to with the trends in the last couple of years.
“Growers who have forward contracted their crop have ended up losing out, so perhaps this is also a factor, even though prices are at such high levels.”
Mr Dubey said the volatility in prices that caused concerns among the production sector had not been an issue in recent years.
“There has been volatility, but it has been at the high end of the price scale so farmers are comfortable at planting they will not be faced with plummeting values for the crop.”
However, he said once the Australia crop was planted and more known about the seasonal prospects, prices were likely to come under pressure.
“If the Australian crop is flagged at around that 1.6-1.7 million tonne mark then you’d expect price pressure, given everyone knows prices are currently at very high levels.”