WESTERN PRODUCER — Pulse Canada is revamping its market development targets after falling short of its previous goals.
In 2018, the organization announced its 25 by 2025 program, a crop-specific strategy for creating demand in new use categories for 25 percent of Canada’s pulses.
The goal was to create two million tonnes of new North American demand for whole split pulses in the foodservice and retail sectors and for pulse flour and fractionation products in the processed food sector.
That ambitious target proved unrealistic, forcing the organization to refresh its diversification strategy in 2022.
The original target for peas was 1.1 million tonnes of new demand by 2025 for flour and fractionated ingredients in the food, pet food, aquaculture and livestock feed markets.
Pulse Canada estimates 750,000 tonnes of Canadian peas were used in North America in 2022, with 500,000 tonnes of that consumed domestically and the rest shipped to the U.S.
“Growth in fractionation processing in North America, and the natural fit for peas in pet food and animal feed, have allowed us to come close to meeting this target,” Julianne Curran, vice-president of market innovation with Pulse Canada, said in an e-mail.
“However, more work needs to be done to build stable, inelastic demand for peas and pea ingredients in these end-use categories.”
Pulse Canada’s new goal is to triple the use of peas in Canada for value-added products and sustainable feed products by 2030.
It is targeting half of Canada’s pea crop to be used in value-added processing, pet food and feed in North America, the EU, the United Kingdom and Southeast Asia by that same time.
“It really represents diversification away from some of our current major geographic markets,” Curran said during a recent episode of the Pulse of the Prairies podcast produced by Saskatchewan Pulse Growers.
The original lentil target was to sell another 625,000 tonnes of whole, pureed, dry and shelf-stable product into the foodservice and retail markets.
New uses for lentils will fall well short of the original goal, with about 100,000 tonnes of additional demand to date.
“We saw a pretty large gap between the target and the current volumes of Canadian lentils that are being consumed in North America,” she said.
The 625,000-tonne target is being retained but the date has been pushed back to 2030, the geography has been expanded to include the European Union and the United Kingdom and the end-use categories now includes pet food.
“There’s a lot of work to do on lentils,” she said.
The original dry bean target called for 75,000 tonnes of new domestic demand for beans. That did not happen.
Domestic bean demand has not expanded since the original targets were set. The new 2030 target for beans calls for a “more reasonable” 25,000 tonnes of incremental use in the domestic market.
The original chickpea target was for 100,000 tonnes of North American demand. U.S. import demand for the product remains strong at about 40,000 tonnes per year.
There is no specific target for chickpeas in the new strategy because there is already a big forecast increase in consumption in the U.S. market, where Canada supplies more than 50 percent of imports.
“We felt that our efforts were best focused on crops where there was a significant gap between the current state and where we wanted to be,” she said.
The original goal for fababeans was for 100,000 tonnes of Canadian production. That goal has been achieved with production fluctuating between 65,000 and 124,000 tonnes.
Pulse Canada felt it was time to establish a market development strategy for that crop now that production levels are adequate.
The target is for three-quarters of the crop to be used for value-added processing, pet food and feed in North America and Asia.
Work is already underway on meeting all the new objectives.
For instance, a wide variety of pea ingredients were showcased to North American food manufacturers at Pulse Immersion Days, a three-day event held in Winnipeg in 2022.
The focus for lentils is on building flour demand for the crop.
“As part of that effort, we launched a rather large digital flour marketing campaign called Flour Facts,” said Curran.
The campaign, designed to promote the nutritional benefits of lentil flour to food manufacturers in North America and Europe, received more than one million impressions.
Amber Johnson, director of marketing and communications with SPG, said there has also been an outreach program in the U.S. focused on increasing the consumption of whole lentils.
SPG has been working with chefs to encourage more lentils being included in chain restaurants, college and university campuses, business parks, hospitals and other health care facilities.
In 2022-23, SPG held six in-person culinary training programs on a variety of campuses, launched a lentil recipe campaign with Compass Group Canada and ran an online virtual training program for chefs.
Working with chain restaurants is a longer-term process, where decisions are made two to 10 years before a menu launch.
SPG also did its first year of foodservice outreach in Europe, working with consultants in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Pulse Canada hosted two virtual events for fababeans, one on the regulatory pathways for using the crop in the U.S. pet food market and the other focused on disseminating the latest research on functionality in food products.
“There’s a lot of interest in fababeans,” said Curran.
