Saskatchewan's chickpea quotes of 4 November were unchanged from the week before, so the late-October rise has now held for two weeks. Desi stands at C$602.52 a tonne, well above last year at this point and above one other of the past five years. Kabuli 9 mm, at C$660.28, is below all five of those years, though only slightly below last year. These provincial quotes are the only chickpea price measure on the page, and no market report in the week explained them. 1 2
The flows changed more than the price. After two weeks of the heaviest deliveries for the time of year in six years, farmers delivered 1,900 tonnes to licensed country elevators, half the week before and level with the lowest of the past five years for this week. Another 700 tonnes went straight to processors. Elevators shipped 2,400 tonnes, the same as the week before and more than in this week of four of the past five years. Their stocks fell by 1,000 tonnes, about half of which the gap between shipments and deliveries explains; the rest is unexplained. Licensed elevators handle only a small part of chickpea trade, so these flows show direction more than volume. 3 4
Last week's watch point was whether elevator stocks would start to build while deliveries stayed high. They did not: deliveries eased and stocks slipped. Those stocks are 13 per cent above average in tonnes, but at the recent pace of shipments they cover fewer weeks than usual. 4 3
The trade behind this has been growing. Customs exports, containers included, were 19,300 tonnes in August against 12,900 a year earlier, and Pakistan and the United States were the largest buyers. The supply is large too: the 2026 harvested area is estimated close to last year's and above every earlier year, more than double 2021 and 2022. Elevators took in two heavy delivery weeks without their stocks building. If another heavy week comes while shipments slow, stocks would build, and that would show the crop starting to outrun buyers at this price. 5 6 3