Marlene Boersch of Mercantile Consulting Venture Inc. in Winnipeg said large carryouts and lower prices over the past year will likely mean fewer pulse acres this spring.

“Like for all commodities, prices are down quite a bit. So your return-per-acre calculation will change very significantly,” Boersch said. “On top of that, for both lentils and peas, you will have some very significant carryout.”

Seeded lentil acres were estimated at 4.138 million tonnes, down 5.5 per cent from last year. The total would be the least amount of acres in three years and the second-least since 2020. One reason for the decline would be the 2025-26 carryout of 1.695 million tonnes, more than three times larger than the previous year’s.

Dry pea acres were also set to be lower, dropping by 12.3 per cent at 3.078 million acres. The figure was also the lowest in three years and the second-lowest since 2012. Dry pea plantings will decline in all three Prairie provinces, most notably Saskatchewan where it will lose 16.6 per cent for a total of 1.479 million. The 2025-26 carryout for dry peas was 1.31 million tonnes, nearly triple from the previous year.

The amount of edible bean acres is projected to decline by 30.7 per cent at 295,000 acres, the smallest total since 2015 and one year after the biggest edible bean crop since 2020. Manitoba’s seeded area was estimated at 120,000 tonnes this year, down 44.7 per cent from 2025.

StatCan estimated faba beans acres this spring to total 55,900, 18.8 per cent lower than in 2025 and the fewest acres since 2016. It would also mark the fourth straight time faba bean acres in Canada declined year-by-year.

Chickpeas were the only pulse to buck the trend. Canadians are expected to use 6.3 per cent more land than last year to grow the crop at 575,000 acres. It would be the fifth straight yearly increase for chickpeas and its largest seeded area since 2001. This is despite 2026 ending stocks for chickpeas having more than quadrupled from the year before at 275,000 tonnes.

The planting survey was conducted from mid-December to mid-January. However, rising fertilizer prices tied to the escalating conflict in the Middle East could shift planting intentions, said Glacier FarmMedia analyst Bruce Burnett. He said the relatively lower input costs for pulse crops compared to other options could lead to more area going to peas and lentils this spring than earlier expectations.

The post Pulse Weekly: StatCan projects fewer pea and lentil acres appeared first on Grainews.

Speaking at a July 29 field day in Carman, Man., research agronomist Kristen MacMillan said she’s in the final year of a study examining how much nitrogen dry beans can fix from the atmosphere through nodulation and whether lower fertilizer rates could be viable for Prairie conditions.

“We’re still waiting for the final results of this study, but almost 50-per-cent reduction in the nitrogen rate would have really important economic benefits for farmers,” said MacMillan.

That finding could come at an ideal time. Manitoba farmers planted a record 207,000 acres of dry beans in 2025 — including a record-high 123,000 acres of pintos — the highest dry bean acreage in two decades.

Dry beans are in the same legume family as peas and soybeans, well known for fixing their own nitrogen out of the atmosphere. Dry beans, though, are worse at it.

“The main reason is that it’s non-selective as a host, so it’s fairly promiscuous with the rhizobia in the soil, and that reduces its efficiency in fixing nitrogen,” said MacMillan.

That reputation has led to full fertilizer programs as standard practice. But MacMillan’s current trials aim to test whether modern cultivars — grown in Manitoba soils that have seen decades of pulse production — might be capable of fixing more nitrogen than previously thought.

Two earlier studies that MacMillan worked on showed that dry beans did respond to fertilizer, but not at economically optimal levels. MacMillan’s earlier work also looked at inoculants, which varied by product.

‘Lazy’ plants

A summary of dry bean nitrogen and nodulation on-farm trials from the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean growers said that yield increased in small plot pinto and navy beans at high nitrogen rates of 140 pounds per acre.

“When considering the return on investment, it was statistically the same for all rates of N application, meaning the economic optimum rate was to not apply any N fertilizer at all,” the summary noted.

It also cited black and pinto bean trials at Brandon, Melita and Carberry from 2021-2022, which found no yield change with different fertilizer rates, with the exception of uninoculated black beans in Melita in 2022.

The same resource noted that fertilizer had an inverse relationship with nodulation. The more fertilizer they put on, the less nodulation they saw.

Plants “become ‘lazy’ and rely on soil nitrogen alone,” the grower group said.

The focus of MacMillan’s current research is to show how much atmospheric nitrogen dry beans are fixing under Manitoba conditions, and whether that amount changes depending on nitrogen rate and inoculation.

One set of plots is measuring nitrogen fixation across 12 popular dry bean cultivars using a method called “natural abundance,” which tracks nitrogen isotopes. A second trial is testing nitrogen fixation under different fertilizer rates, with or without inoculant.

“The hypothesis that’s being tested is whether we can move from a full rate of N fertilizer down to a low rate and still maximize yield,” she said.

Dry beans in Manitoba typically yield around 2,000 pounds per acre, which translates to about 90 pounds of nitrogen. MacMillan said literature suggests N fixation could provide up to 20 to 40 per cent of that requirement — a meaningful contribution, especially when combined with residual nitrogen already in the soil.

In addition to saving farmers money, less nitrogen applied means less nitrous oxide — a heavily-scrutinized greenhouse gas — is released into the atmosphere.

“Environmentally, this could lead to less nitrogen-intensive cropping systems when it comes to growing dry beans,” she said.

The post Lower nitrogen rates in dry beans could pay off for farmers appeared first on Grainews.

Producers across Saskatchewan, and into neighbouring areas of Manitoba and Alberta, can access the site, input their location, and soil type, and find detailed trial results and variety information. The performance data will then help in making informed decisions about which pulse crops perform best in their specific geographic areas and growing environments. The enhanced platform builds on a previous tool, with several significant improvements:

Updated Pulse Varieties: The platform has a broad range of pulse varieties including lentils, peas, chickpeas, faba beans and dry beans.

Advanced Data Sets: Enhanced with detailed data sets that offer deeper insights into variety performance, including ratings for maturity, seed coat colour, protein content and disease resistance.

Weather Data Integration: Weather data is included to compare varietal performance under variable environmental conditions, helping producers understand how different varieties respond to climate patterns.

Superior User Experience: Completely redesigned interface ensures intuitive navigation and streamlined access to critical information. Compare all varieties available for a selected crop and region simultaneously.

Multi-Device Compatibility: Optimized for seamless performance across desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones, enabling farmers to access vital information anywhere, anytime.

Complete Feature Integration: All popular features from the previous version have been preserved and enhanced, ensuring continuity for existing users while providing expanded capabilities.

“We are excited to introduce this powerful new tool that will help pulse producers make more informed variety selection decisions,” said Winston van Staveren, SPG Board Chair in a news release. “The enhanced Pulse Variety Hub represents our continued commitment to supporting farmers with the most transparent and accessible agricultural information available.”

The platform serves as a resource for pulse crop producers seeking to optimize their variety selection based on specific growing conditions, regions, market requirements and production goals. The comprehensive database includes detailed information on agronomic characteristics, average yields, disease resistance profiles, maturity ratings and performance data across various growing environments.

The post New Pulse Variety Hub launched in Saskatchewan appeared first on Grainews.

That’s what a recent two-year study aimed to address, with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researchers looking at practical ways to limit lygus damage in faba beans. They focused on the pest’s tendency to migrate into faba from other crops as they mature and dry down.

Lygus feed on a wide range of hosts and are drawn to plants with flowers and tender tissue. That makes flowering time critical. Unfortunately for faba beans, their pod fill stage often lines up with the drydown period in nearby crops, which draws in lygus bugs at the worst possible time.

Trap cropping

That’s where trap crops come in. The idea is simple: plant something even more attractive than faba beans along the field edge, draw lygus in and hit them with an insecticide before they move on.

Trap cropping isn’t a new concept. AAFC entomologist Héctor Cárcamo, who led the lygus bug study, points out it was common for farmers to use trap crops to control wheat stem sawfly before resistant, solid-stem wheat varieties became available.

“Farmers would plant things like oats along the borders and ditches,” he says.

Nowadays, trap crops are more common in regions with smaller fields, where farmers can afford to manage more complex systems. On the Prairies, where farms are large and time is tight, adding extra steps such as planting and managing a separate trap crop can be a tough sell.

Still, Cárcamo believes there’s untapped potential.

“There are opportunities we’re missing in terms of reducing insecticide costs and the environmental impacts of spraying,” he says.

There’s also the looming threat of resistance. Lygus has already shown signs of resistance to some pyrethroids like Matador in cotton in the U.S.

“We should be taking whatever steps we can to reduce repeated applications of the same insecticides,” says Cárcamo.

What they tested

The research team used both lab and field trials to test how lygus responds to different crops. In the lab, they offered bugs a choice between faba beans and five other species: flax, peas, canola, safflower and alfalfa.

While there were hints that lygus males caused more damage when canola was in the mix, nothing significantly outperformed faba beans in terms of attractiveness. Cárcamo isn’t surprised.

“You’re in a very artificial environment in the lab,” he says. “What you see there doesn’t always play out in the field.”

The real insights came from side-by-side field trials at Lethbridge and Vauxhall, Alta., where faba beans were grown next to each potential trap crop. Researchers monitored lygus numbers and necrotic seed damage in the faba plots and tested two different insecticides to see how spraying affected outcomes.

What they found

First off, not every crop worked equally well. Peas and flax had the lowest lygus numbers, meaning they were less attractive and offered little trap potential.

Canola, on the other hand, was a major lygus magnet. Unfortunately, the bugs didn’t stop there: they spilled into the faba plots and caused serious seed damage.

“It was very clear they love canola and all the brassicaceae crops,” says Cárcamo. “But the problem is they also like faba beans enough to cause damage.”

Canola attracts lygus effectively, but to work as a trap crop, it has to be paired with well-timed insecticide applications. Otherwise, the bugs may still reach the faba beans.

Safflower appears to hold lygus bugs for longer. In 2022, faba beans beside safflower had significantly less damage than those next to canola. This lines up with findings from cotton systems in other countries, where safflower has been used as an effective trap crop.

Sunflowers, tested in 2023, also attracted high lygus numbers. Damage in adjacent faba plots was still present, but researchers observed high levels of parasitism by beneficial wasps such as Peristenus. That opens the door to more integrated strategies.

“There’s potential to use crops like sunflowers not just to attract lygus, but to support natural enemies,” Cárcamo says.

For organic growers, especially, safflower could be a good candidate.

“That might be the crop where you can hope to retain the lygus bug the longest,” Cárcamo says. “They like it better than faba beans, so the damage should be less.”

He cautions that trap cropping alone won’t reduce lygus populations, but it may help delay damage long enough to make a difference.

In a situation like this, he adds, there’s a need to integrate trap crops with natural enemies such as parasitoid wasps that attack the baby lygus. And for non-organic farmers, if needed, he recommends using selective insecticides that are soft on the beneficial insects essential for faba seed set.

Role of insecticides

The insecticide trials also revealed key insights. In 2022, the team used Beleaf, a product with low impact on pollinators and beneficials. It didn’t significantly reduce damage.

In 2023, they switched to lambda-cyhalothrin, a more aggressive pyrethroid. That spray reduced both lygus numbers and seed damage, but with greater risk to non-target insects.

What’s next?

Cárcamo says this work is still in its early days. Larger-scale trials in commercial fields are needed to confirm which trap crops work best and how to fine-tune the approach.

One scenario he’d like to test involves planting strips of faba beans and peas side by side, with canola along the field edges to act as a trap. But he doesn’t recommend farmers try this before the idea has been tested more.

“I’d like to look into the possibility of doing an experiment with a farmer,” he says. “That way, we can try it at a smaller scale first and monitor before scaling up to a full field.”

This year, he’s shifting focus slightly to test similar ideas in lentils, which will involve more real-world testing, including trials in lentil fields and work on natural enemy populations.

“We’re now looking for lentil growers to participate,” he says. “We want to measure how many natural enemies are present in the field.”

He’s also exploring options that could prove helpful for organic growers. In the lab, his team is testing insect-killing fungi — known as entomopathogens — on alfalfa weevils. The fungi work, but they’re slow, often taking two weeks to kill the insect.

“So you’d need a crop with a long flowering period, like safflower, to hold the pests long enough for the fungus to do its job,” he explains.

For now, trap crops will likely remain a tough sell for Canadian farmers. But the research shows that with the right crop, timing and spray strategy, they might give farmers — organic or otherwise — another tool to manage this tricky pest.

The post Could trap crops help fend off lygus in faba beans? appeared first on Grainews.

Eric McLean, who farms near Oak River, Man., thinks farmers should avoid the “easy button” approach to crop production.

Adding another crop to the canola-cereal rotation may not make buckets of money this year, but it offers benefits down the road.

“With canola, we’ve seen the increases of verticillium (stripe) that’s been taking off the top end (yield) potential in canola,” said McLean, who was part of a panel discussion on pulse crops at Manitoba Ag Days in Brandon in January.

“We have to keep trying different things. Honestly, that is the solution, to have that diversification in the crop rotation.”

McLean shared the stage with growers who have tried alternative pulse crops such as faba beans, lupins, non-genetically modified soybeans and black beans.

READ MORE: Faba beans for Prairie gardens — and fields

McLean, who runs JS Henry Seeds, is convinced growing a pulse crop this year will pay off in coming years. It can reduce canola disease pathogens and improve the soil.

That sounds great, but there are practical realities: for instance, if producers aren’t seeding canola, what are they planting?

Jeff Kostuik, general manager of Verve Seeds and a former crop diversification expert in Manitoba, says that’s not the right question. Many farmers would add peas to their crop rotation, but they can’t because of issues with aphanomyces, a serious soil disease.

So, farmers need an alternative to peas. One option could be faba beans.

The crop hit a high of 120,000 acres on the Prairies in 2021. Since then, acres have dipped to around 80,000.

That’s partly explained by export demand. Canada exported 38,000 and 28,000 tonnes of faba beans, respectively, in 2019 and 2020.

Those sales have declined, and domestic feed use is now more important.

“Canadian export performance over the past six years shows that fababean usage is increasingly a domestic affair, with only two major destinations: Egypt and the United States,” Marlene Boersch of Mercantile Consulting wrote recently.

“Most Canadian-grown fababeans are primarily used domestically for pet food and livestock feed.”

Faba bean acres and production may have dropped in Canada, but there’s a mood of optimism right now.

A seed dealer at Ag Days said more growers are inquiring about faba beans, and acres will likely jump in 2025.

Part of that optimism is coming from the food industry.

There is growing interest from food manufacturers who want to use faba beans as a source of protein.

To tap into that opportunity, Canadian plant breeders have developed varieties that are low in vicine and convicine, a pair of compounds that can cause severe health problems in a small percentage of people.

For that population, consuming faba beans with vicine/convicine can damage red blood cells and trigger a serious disease called favism.

Canada’s faba bean industry is transitioning to low vicine/convicine varieties, which could make a world of difference.

“That barricade of the anti-nutritional, the vicine/convicine, was so important in the breeding efforts to eliminate that (issue),” Kostuik says.

“It has certainly opened things up.”

Faba bean prices are decent this winter, around $10 to $11 per bushel.

Top-end yields of 100 bu. per acre are possible in Western Canada, but 60-70 bu. are more reasonable targets, Kostuik says.

One of the keys for higher yields is early seeding. It’s important to get them in the ground as soon as possible to avoid hot weather during the flowering period.

“It’s a big bean. You want to get it in early. It takes in a lot of moisture at the beginning of the season,” Kostuik says.

“The past research (shows) seeding date is one of the biggest things for yield.”

It’s likely that a farmer, growing faba beans for the first time, won’t hit a home run on yield.

However, that’s acceptable because a diverse rotation has other benefits, McLean says.

“If we can elevate the two following crops (after) these pulse crop options, we can recoup any marginal losses … in the pulse crop,” he says.

“If you get an extra five or 10 bu. of canola … that will easily offset (the pulse crop).”

The post Faba beans could help ease rotation pressure on canola appeared first on Grainews.

By separating “the good stuff” (protein, starch and dietary fibre) from faba beans, a University of Alberta researcher has improved on a process that minimizes human flatulence from eating them. That issue has long been a deterrent to mass acceptance of the pulse.

But Brasathe Jeganathan’s work is also driving more sustainable improvements in extracting protein from faba beans. The end result is a very pure protein with significant food applications.

“One of the biggest challenges we are facing now, as food scientists, is feeding 9.7 billion people by 2050,” says Jeganathan, who earned a PhD in food science and technology for her research.

And on a more micro level, there’s potential to create food products from the extracted bean protein. “For example, if you want to develop a vegan high-protein snack, then you need to have a faba bean protein fraction which is high in protein,” she says.

“If you use the faba bean by itself, it wouldn’t work in order to get certain functional properties, like the ability to form a gel. You need high pure protein fractions to produce food products.”

READ MORE: Fava beans for Prairie gardens — and fields

The research is good news for a crop slowly increasing in acreage across the Prairies. Alberta produced 50 per cent of Canada’s 2021 faba bean crop, followed by Saskatchewan with 41 per cent and Manitoba at nine.

The researcher used a common food industry process, fractionation. In the case of faba beans (also known as fava, broad and horse beans), fractionation is a process used to separate pure protein from the bean’s less desirable compounds – those that cause gas.

There are two types of fractionation: wet and dry. At its most fundamental, wet fractionation can be compared to coffee or tea, she said, in which grounds are brewed in hot water to extract desired compounds. But wet fractionation is a chemically- and energy-intensive process.

Dry fractionation employs grinding and sieving, similar to handling flour in the kitchen. However, wet fractionation is generally preferred in the industry because dry methods only produce protein concentrates, which are not pure versions of protein.

“You can only achieve modest enrichment in the protein content if you use (dry methods), but it’s sustainable because you don’t use any chemicals,” she says.

Experimenting with hybrid methods using both wet and dry fractionation, as well as a chemical-free extraction method using only water, Jeganathan was able to isolate and extract protein from the bean. The chemical-free methods resulted in higher quality protein, up to 94 per cent pure.

“Based on all three methods, I was able to achieve high purity,” she says. “I would say with the hybrid method, where I used dry and wet methods together, the water consumption was much less compared to using just the water extraction method alone.”

Through a process called pearling, the research also revealed the protein in faba beans is more concentrated in the bean’s external layers. Pearling is usually accomplished by grinding the entire bean, but Jeganathan took it down a notch.

“Instead of grinding the whole bean, we ground only 60 per cent of the outer layer of the bean, which is high in protein.”

Jeganathan’s research isn’t done. Her postdoctoral work at Washington State University will investigate how her proposed extraction method carries over to a variety of beans as well as sea algae. “Definitely we are seeing a huge potential.”

The post The flatulence-free faba bean appeared first on Grainews.

“Faba bean is not susceptible to root rot. Quinoa is not susceptible to fusarium. So it’s two crops that we can grow over here that may fit well into our rotation,” says Brad Goudy, owner of Goudy Ag Products and a grain marketing consultant based out of Melfort, Sask.

Growing new crops is one thing. Marketing them is quite another. While Goudy sees potential in both the faba bean and quinoa markets for growers, there’s plenty of work involved to reach that potential.

• Read more: Sask Pulse Growers studies market for faba beans

Goudy isn’t a broker. He explains he charges clients an annual fee for his services. He also runs a hedging course to help his clients improve their canola and wheat marketing chops. Goudy started consulting three years ago, with 60 clients. At that time, 80 per cent or more of his work was oats. He worked with oat buyers, growers, shortlines, and Canadian National to get oats to market.

(If you’re wondering why the Goudy name seems familiar it could be because Brad’s dad, Ken, developed Treflan for use on rapeseed in the 1960s and 1970s. He also worked toward producing generic glyphosate for the Canadian market once it went off-patent.)

Many of his clients grew high tannin faba beans. Since then, that market has dried up, he says, and they’re focusing on the feed market now. “A lot of guys are interested in growing them, but the big thing is finding a stable market.”

One of Goudy’s buyers was interested in faba beans as hog feed, but needed a steady supply. Goudy started working on a contract during the Crop Production Show in January 2016.

Goudy started signing up faba bean growers in the Parkland. He realized he’d need more farmers to fill the contract so he organized meetings with interested growers from east of Yorkton to Lloydminster. “It looks like we’ve found another 60 guys who want to join in with us and produce fabas.”

Since then Goudy says he’s been talking to other companies looking for a steady supply of faba beans for their feed rations. That’s allowed him to sign up more farmers and increase his current clients’ faba bean acreage. It also spreads out the production area, he adds.

Farmers can certainly grow faba beans on spec, as they do with most crops. But Goudy is asking growers to sign up for his services so he can manage the market. He says he wants to create a win/win for buyers and growers.

“I don’t want to be ignorant or seen as mean or whatever. But there is real opportunity to over-produce this and blow the whole thing up before we really get the benefit out of it.”

He did catch some flak from farmers who were already supplying local barns during one of the meetings. But he says he’s trying to organize farmers, not steal their business. If a hog barn doesn’t have a guaranteed steady supply of faba beans, they aren’t likely to get into them, Goudy says. Switching faba beans in and out of rations doesn’t work well for the animals.

At interview time in mid-February, Goudy was still looking for a few more farmers, and still getting calls from companies looking for faba beans.

Goudy had just returned from a faba bean conference in North Dakota at interview time. North Dakota pulse growers are running into similar problems with root rot as Saskatchewan growers, and are looking to faba beans as a way to keep pulses in their rotations.

He’d hoped to suss out an opportunity to ship faba beans south of the border. But the AGT flour fractionation plant in North Dakota isn’t taking Canadian faba beans right now.

“It’s a very small market at this point.” AGT is encouraging pet food companies and others to try faba beans because of the nutritional and taste qualities, he adds.

Goudy has been talking to people at Canadian International Grains Institute (Cigi), who has been incorporating pulses into flour.

“They’ve had a number of companies express a lot of interest in it. And what they’ve said is the (faba bean) flour is 50 per cent higher in protein than pea or lentil flour,” says Goudy. Faba bean flour also has a milder taste than other pulse flours, he adds.

Another plus is that the smaller low tannin varieties work for fractionation, Goudy says. Most of the tannin is in the hull, he explains.

Still, food processors, and Goudy himself, are concerned about favism. Favism is a hereditary blood disorder that switches on when people are exposed to various triggers, including the vicine in faba beans. It affects a small part of the population but Goudy thinks it’s the biggest area of concern for the food consumption market.

“I don’t want to see us forging ahead on this and then find out we’re creating a problem or a liability even.”

Whether plant breeders or food processors can remove the vicine remains to be seen.

Goudy would like to take a closer look at flour fractionation once they’ve grown faba bean feed acres. Goudy’s ideas right now include partnering with someone to build a plant, partnering with an existing plant that will produce faba bean flour, or working with a plant in an export market that is already using faba bean fractions. Moose Jaw and Brandon are building pulse flour processing plants. Goudy says they’re not planning to mill faba beans yet, as the acreage is too small.

The market is in the interesting stage, Goudy says, where there’s lots of potential. If the industry keeps promoting faba beans over the next two or three years, he thinks there will be a lot more opportunity for faba bean flour.

The post Would faba beans fit in your crop rotation? appeared first on Grainews.

But Feyertag and his colleagues are doing quite a bit of work analyzing markets for lentils and other pulses these days, he said, as the plant protein market grows.

“That’s why Canada is going to play a very important role in the future in meeting that protein deficit that’s emerging around the world.”

However, what market exists for Canada’s growing faba green production is another question. To find some answers, Saskatchewan Pulse Growers commissioned LMC International to report on the market potential for fabas.

• Read more: Would fabas fit in your crop rotation?

Export markets

Global demand for faba beans is now about four million tonnes, up from about 3.2 million tonnes in 1995. Nearly half that growth is in Ethiopia, Feyertag said. France, Morocco, Australia, Sudan, China, Egypt and Canada have also seen growth. Consumption has declined in the Mediterranean basin.

Despite that seemingly rosy picture, the global export market is limited. Feyertag said production has kept pace with demand in most countries. China’s production has declined. However, China used to be the world’s biggest exporter, so the country remains self-sufficient, Feyertag said.

That leaves Egypt, which has seen 107,000 tonnes of growth in consumption since 1995. But despite growing demand, faba bean production has declined significantly in Egypt, Feyertag said. That’s partly because the government subsidizes wheat, so farmers prioritize the cereal. Plus, there’s not enough arable land to expand production, he added.

“If you’ve been to Egypt, you know that all the arable land is around the Nile. And that’s exactly where they’ve built the cities.”

Egyptian importers prefer large, high tannin faba beans, which have better cooking quality. Smaller ones mean lower prices. “They really take their faba beans very seriously in Egypt,” said Feyertag.

Australia dominates the Egyptian faba bean market, producing higher-quality beans than many of its global rivals. The U.K. and France also have substantial shares of the market. France produces the least desirable beans of the three, and is dinged $60 per tonne compared to the Australian faba beans.

Should Canada focus on varieties coveted by global consumers? Feyertag doesn’t think so. Egypt will account for most of the future faba bean market growth, with the exceptions of small export markets in Morocco and Ethiopia, he said.

“If there is an export market that is concentrated in one single country, especially a country as politically unstable as Egypt, that’s probably a bad way to set up your industry,” he said.

Canadian exporters can fetch a premium if they sell between December and February, he said.

“And that’s not a coincidence. That is the space in between exports from the United Kingdom and exports from Australia.”

But sell outside that narrow window “then the premium falls right down.”

Domestic opportunity

Market opportunity for faba beans is much closer to home, in Feyertag’s opinion.

There may be opportunity for food consumption of whole faba beans in Canada, he said. Faba beans could also be fractionated to develop protein concentrates, although more research is needed.

“But if we do discover a functional nutritional advantage of using faba bean flour, faba bean protein concentrate, then that could potentially release huge volumes into the market,” said Feyertag. “That’s the wild card.”

Feyertag said AGT Food and Ingredients, Canadian International Grains Institute (Cigi) and the Sask Food Industry Development Centre are exploring faba bean flour use.

The pulse flour market is only about 100,000 tonnes in Canada right now, Feyertag said. Many food manufacturers avoid it because it reduces baking quality. But consumers want plant-based protein and more fibre in their food, he said.

Entering the whole food market would require high tannin varieties. Tannin reduces protein digestibility, so it’s not desirable in animal feed. But consumers like the bitter taste.

However, the sector needs to beware favism, a hereditary disease that destroys blood cells. Faba beans are one of the triggers of the blood disorder in the unlucky people who are genetically prone to the condition. Most afflicted people have Mediterranean ancestry.

Favism is behind the faba bean consumption decline in the Mediterranean. Feyertag said faba bean breeders are working on varieties free from vicine, which activates the disease.

Faba bean protein would also face tough competition from soybeans. Soybeans are very high in protein and relatively cheap to produce, said Feyertag.

There are other challenges with faba bean protein. “The biggest problem we find is that you need to find value for the starch components,” said Feyertag.

Domestic feed market a safe bet

Adjust costs on a protein basis, and faba bean is a cheaper protein source than anything else, said Feyertag. “It’s already used by hog and poultry farmers. And feed millers buy it when it’s at a discount to peas.”

Vicine not an issue in livestock feed, according to research so far. Neither is lygus bug damage or bean size. Plus starch is seen as an energy source in the livestock industry, he added.

Snowbird is currently the dominant faba bean variety in Canada, and as a low tannin cultivar, it works fine for the feed industry. So does CDC Snowdrop, which sits at number two in Canada.

Feyertag pointed out that faba beans can be grown closer to the feed industry, making them cheaper to truck than soybeans in Manitoba or the U.S. Because faba beans can be grown north of the border, feeders could also avoid currency risks.

Just how big is the feed market? The hog and poultry market in Alberta and Saskatchewan could take between 220,000 and 500,000 tonnes of faba beans, depending on one’s optimism, Feyertag said. The Atlantic salmon feed market could also take up to 113,000 tonnes of raw material, which would be turned into protein concentrate.

“And then if you look at the beef cattle sector, then you’re talking about seven to nine million tonnes.”

Faba beans would be competing against other ingredients in a price-sensitive sector. But Feyertag doesn’t see anything stopping faba beans from competing.

Feyertag took questions from the floor at the end of his presentation. Brad Goudy, a marketing consultant from Melfort, said that he’d put together a production contract for faba beans as feed. He asked how they could build a good base for a feed market.

“The real solution to the feed market is volume,” Feyertag said. “(Feeders) can’t buy a tonne of faba beans here and there. They need tens of thousands of tonnes.”

Faba bean growers would have to accept lower prices until feed mills realize faba beans are a good source of protein, and the volume reaches the market, Feyertag said.

“Once that happens prices will adjust on a protein-level basis, as long as there aren’t any other disadvantages of using faba beans against peas or against soybeans, which as far as I’m aware, there aren’t.”

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The grower group contributes levy funds to the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre pulse breeding program. In return, Sask Pulse holds exclusive commercial rights to varieties developed in the program.

Most new varieties are released royalty-free to seed growers through the variety release program. By distributing new and better varieties, Sask Pulse aims to grow the industry. Nationally-recognized select seed growers can request breeder seed as long as their provincial pulse groups have an agreement with Sask Pulse.

“To date, 115 varieties have been released through the variety release program,” a Sask Pulse release said Friday. The variety release program (VRP) includes peas, chickpeas, beans, faba beans and lentils.

But varieties that don’t have an established market would likely fail if released through this program, Sask Pulse said. For such varieties, the group instead considers offering exclusive rights through its tender release program (TRP).

Sask Pulse takes into account several factors before deciding whether to tender the rights to a market class or variety, from demand and product volume to whether it risks disrupting markets already supplied by Saskatchewan growers.

Seven of those tender agreements will sunset in 2017 and 2018. Before deciding whether to renew the tenders or release the varieties more broadly, Sask Pulse is looking for feedback from farmers and other stakeholders.

The grower group will also examine “performance of the tender partners to date, prospects for growth and an assessment of the need for exclusivity for the market class or variety to succeed,” the release said.

The tenders up for review include:

• Large Red Lentil (KR-1, KR-2 CL) – AGT Foods/Saskcan
• Spanish Brown Lentil (CDC SB-1, CDC SB-2, CDC SB-3 CL – Simpson Seeds
• Green Cotyledon Lentil (QG1, QG2, QG3 CL) – AGT Foods/Saskcan
• Large Seeded Food Grade Faba Bean (FB9-4) – AGT Foods/Saskcan
• Yellow Bean (CDC Sol) – Scoular Canada (formerly Legumex Walker)
• Black Bean (CDC Jet, CDC SuperJet, Blackstrap, Blackcomb) – Scoular Canada (formerly Legumex Walker) and Martens Seeds
• Slow to Darken Pinto Beans (WMI, WMII) – Scoular Canada (formerly Legumex Walker) and Keg Agro

The deadline for providing input is Friday, June 3. Growers and others can throw in their two cents through an online survey.

More information on the tender release program is available on the Sask Pulse website.

— Lisa Guenther is a field editor for Grainews and Country Guide at Livelong, Sask. Follow her at @LtoG on Twitter.

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For the past 10 years we have been growing fababeans on irrigation in Southern Alberta and have found them to be an asset to our rotation and crop diversity. We have also grown fababeans on dry land but they are more of a medium to high rainfall crop or suitable for an area with soils that have good water holding capacity.

The main fababean variety we grow is called FB 9-4. The buyer is AGT Foods, who exports them. FB 9-4 are a large seeded tannin variety with excellent yield potential and good disease package.

Yields can range between the 70 to100 bushels per acre on irrigation which is similar to spring wheat yields in our area. No nitrogen is required, but inoculant and 11-52 fertilizer is used in the seed row. Fababeans can be seeded early, as they are frost tolerant early in the season — we have planted as early as April 5. Weed control for fababeans is similar to peas.

Fababeans can follow cereals in rotation, and sometimes canola. After fababeans we have grown cereals, canola, and flax crops.

Grey mold (Botrytis) can be a disease issue for fababeans but fungicides can be used to control it.

Pea Leaf Weevils are a problem in some areas as they eat the leaves of young plants and their larvae eat the nitrogen nodules. We can use a seed treatment to control/limit this problem.

Lygus bugs can be a problem mid to late in the season. They bite through the pods and leave a black spot on the seed. An insecticide may be used to control lygus bugs in fababeans.

The numbers

I have put together some crop comparisons showing actual costs and returns of fababeans, on irrigated land, compared to other crops in the fall of 2015. When you include the value of the residual N left in the soil after a year of growing fababeans, the estimated net return shown in the chart is $542.43 for fababeans. This is 169 per cent of the estimated return for wheat ($321.81).

This chart shows southern Alberta costs with an insecticide seed treatment for Pea Leaf Weevil. Keep in mind, the insecticide seed treatment may not be needed. Without the treatment, the per acre seed treatment costs for fababeans would fall from $39.38 per acre to $21.78 per acre, increasing net returns to $560.03. The seed treatment costs for peas would also fall, in my case from $31.33 as shown in the table to $17.33 per acre.

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