Chickpea price prompts another huge planting

Old crop chickpeas are trading more than $1000 a tonne delivered to Brisbane, while the new crop peas are fetching more than $900/t, also delivered Brisbane.

That’s up by about $150/t last month, according to Ag Scientia analyst Lloyd George.

“The market is very strong and it’s been resilient the whole way through the season, despite last year’s huge crop,” Mr George said.

The strong export demand comes despite a huge nine million tonne chickpea crop in India. 

“We’re still seeing unprecedented demand,” Mr George said.

“As the Indian population grows, the demand for chickpeas will remain very strong.

“How much of that is due to a couple of bad seasons in India, is not really clear, but at the moment, demand is strong, from a number of individual exporters.

“Like always with chickpeas, the export market will want them earlier in the harvest, and I expect that would be the case again this year.”

Demand for last year’s crop was driven by a deficit in supply in India as crops failed due to the lack of monsoonal rain.

Mr George said plenty of growers were looking to forward sell at current prices, despite sowing only just beginning in the state’s north.

The Central Queensland plant is well underway, while planting in the state’s north will begin next week.

“Forward selling will be much the same as the past three years with chickpeas,” Mr George said.

“At these prices they make very good returns.”

The major problem for growers will be disease, and growers have been urged not to plant back-to-back chickpeas.

“The incentive to plant chickpeas is very strong, and there’s certainly an element of that – they'll be pushing the boundaries,” Mr George said.

McGregor Gourlay senior agronomist Scott Rogers, Croppa Creek, said growers in the north would plant a similar area to last year, with the good prices being the main driver behind crop decisions.

Growers from Croppa Creek and west to Garah are looking to plant from the middle of May, following early wheat and barley varieties.

The main concern now is disease issues from growers planting chickpeas on chickpeas.

“We’re trying to get our growers to leave a two-year break, particularly on the back of the high levels of disease during the season last year,” Mr Rogers said.

“There’s a huge potential for disease outbreak after last year’s wet season and we’re already finding ascochyta in volunteer chickpeas.”

CHICKPEAS are play a big part in the rotation on Lee Coleman’s properties, but the good market has prompted a bigger planting than usual.

The Croppa Creek grower will plant 800 hectares of PBA HatTrick chickpeas at “Yamboon”, “Talula” and “Boyanda”, at a rate of 55kg a hectare, with 50kg of zinc starter.

Sowing should begin in the last week of May.

The crop will include 10ha of PBA Seamer for seed increase and to trial it in comparison to HatTrick.

Mr Coleman said he was mindful of disease pressure, despite a five-year rotation.

“I normally plant about 500ha in the rotation but we were able to move a bit of second year sorghum country into a second opportunity crop of chickpeas,” he said.

“I usually only have one broadleaf inside a five-year rotation, and we haven’t got to the situation where there’s only a one-year gap.”

Mr Coleman has already stocked up on fungicide to prepare for disease issues.

“We’ve got enough for two sprays, and we did that last year as well, and we were a full spray ahead of everyone, which meant we weren’t rushing to get a spray on before a rain event.”

Chickpeas work well in the sloping country, with the good drainage reducing the chance of root rot.

“It makes them harder to harvest – we’ve got to get them off the contour banks – but the country works well with chickpeas, so even at $450 to $500 a tonne we’d still have them in the rotation,” Mr Coleman said.

He plans to forward sell some of the crop, but also has on farm storage.