STAT Communications Ag Market News

Controversy Over Chickpea Stocks

PANAMA - Feb 5/21 - SNS -- Controversy continues to surround Canadian chickpea supply and demand estimates, with most in the industry believing Statistics Canada is under estimating domestic disappearance.

The federal agency said that as of December 31, there were 408,000 metric tons (MT) of chickpeas on hand in Canada, up sharply from 328,000 the same time the previous year. On farm stocks jumped from 309,000 to 380,000 MT, while product in commercial positions advanced from 19,000 to 28,000 MT.

Of the two numbers, markets have confidence in the commercial inventory because it is based on direct surveys of the companies. However, stocks on farms were derived from a survey of 8,000 farmers across Canada, suggesting a small number of actual chickpea growers would have been included. In simple terms, the bigger the geographic area where a crop is grown, the better the survey result.

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