How better marketing could earn pulse farmers millions

Grain industry groups say pulse farmers have lost millions in revenue due to outdated marketing and classification systems.

Australian pulse farmers are losing out on millions of dollars of revenue due to delays in the development of a pulse classification system, an industry body has said.

Grain Growers Ltd chief executive David McKeon said Pulse Australia’s slow progress in developing a classification system had been “frustrating”.

“We’ve been advocating to Pulse Australia for a number of years to get this process moving. The longer they leave it, the longer we’re leaving value on the table and Australian farmers are missing out,” Mr McKeon said.

“There’s potential for millions of dollars of extra value for Australian farmers if we get this right,” he said.

Australian farmers are increasingly adding pulses to their crop rotations, with average annual production rising 20 per cent to 2.7 million tonnes a year in the five years to 2019-20 and the value of production increased 71 per cent to $1.5 billion a year during the same period.

But Mr McKeon said marketing and classification of Australian pulses hadn’t kept up with industry growth.

Farmers have been losing about $20 a tonne off potential premiums for lentils due to Australia not having a pulse classification system in place, Grain Growers Ltd has said. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Popular new lentil varieties Hallmark and Highland were “performing well in the paddock”, but when it came to selling them, farmers weren’t receiving the premiums they deserved due to failures in the classification system, he said.

On average, farmers were losing about $20 a tonne off the premium – losses amounted to “millions” across the industry, he said.

Pulse Australia chief executive Nick Goddard said the organisation had released a discussion paper to “get the ball rolling” on a classification system, but it would now be up to Grains Australia to develop the system and its timeline.

“It is complicated. There are so many different types of pulses that it won’t just be one classification system. There will actually be five or six classification systems.

“We will do lentils first, then work our way through faba beans, chick peas, lupins, field peas etc.

Within each category, “there are different applications — there are splitting markets, milling markets for flour, and whole seeds for dhal — and that’s even before we get to new opportunities, like the plant protein extraction facilities, which we’re seeing popping up right, left and centre.”

“It’s not going to happen overnight.”

“I’d like to think we could get a working group going with Grains Australia in the next couple of months, so that we can demonstrate some progress,” Mr Goddard said.