Harvesting continued through January in many areas of South Australia and Victoria. The main pulse affected has been beans both broad and faba types.

Broad beans are mainly grown in the South east of South Australia and due to lack of hot weather harvesting is still continuing.   Size has been good but the delays have meant a lot of staining of the seed coats and consequent downgrading of the quality.

After the pre-Christmas rains farmers were finally able to get back to harvesting in the new year. In South Australia most were able to finish except in the South-East, which is traditionally a later area. There was some damage to Faba Bean crops with staining which meant downgrading to a #2. Broad Beans quality so far has been good for the crops harvested prior to the last rain event but later crops being harvested now are affected by water staining.

However in Victoria farmers were not so fortunate with some major “dumps” of rain over 120mm throughout the Wimmera and Mallee which stopped harvest and ruined the remaining un-harvested crops. The most affected were Kabuli Chickpeas and small Broad Beans. The end result of this rain has been widespread flooding in towns including Horsham and several others cutting roads and flooding houses.

The Australian dollar closed the week ending the 10th of December at 0.9853 up about 100 points on its low of the week.

Weather.

Heavy rain continued in NSW and Many areas are now flooded, especially around Weewaa through to Colleamberly. The desi chick pea crop is devastated and thousands of containers have been washed out by the trade.

Australian Crop Conditions.

Chick peas:

A large area of the Queensland crop has been lost due to rain damage and a lot of contracts have been washed out. The Crop in northern New South Wales has suffered from heavy disease problems and harvest will be delayed until late November. This will place a lot of pressure on the logistics and November contracts. 

Lentils:

We have looked at a lot of crops recently in South Australia and Victoria and apart from some disease pressure in crops on Yorke Peninsula they look excellent in both states. Industry sources are predicting a harvest of between 280,000 to 340,000 mt. The latter would be an all time record. Despite the large expected crop, farmer selling at the moment is minimal as there are fears of a wet harvest and consequent damage. Prices are steady with offers around US$820 for Nugget type and bids around US$790 into the main markets.

Chickpeas - Desi type.

Pakistan Buyers have come into the market later this month and a number of trades have been reported for prompt shipment from USD505 ending the week at around USD525 CFR Karachi.

Most likely reason is the terrible devastation caused by the floods and the concern at availability of everyday fundamental foodstuffs like chickpeas.

New crop is looking excellent although there are some issues with too much rain with water logging of some concern together with the increased risk of disease.

Chickpeas – Kabuli.

Markets around the world remain firm with process rising over the last two weeks, old crop from the USA & Canada is basically done and traders are reluctant to offer for new crop until the product is assured at harvest. New crop #2 ob B90 were indicated at USD930-950 level to Mid East destinations.