Australian chickpeas are in hot demand, with delivered prices jumping this month towards $1,000 per tonne in some regions. It is a significant increase from earlier in the year, when the market was trading closer to $600 per tonne.
Grains Australia Pulse Council chair Peter Wilson said it was a great result for growers. "We haven't seen $1,000 per tonne since 2024, so it's significant. It's a great price," he said. "For growers who have ended up with a decent [chickpea] crop, this is balance-sheet altering. There's no other way to describe it."
Mr Wilson attributed the price surge to a combination of factors. "There's a lot of volatility globally right now, which is creating enormous turbulence in logistics and supply chains, which is keeping buyers on edge," he said. "We're also seeing the impacts of El Niño, which looks to have left parts of India with lower-than-average rainfall from the monsoon, which has caused their local chickpea prices to rise, which is pushing everything along."
Mr Wilson said several nations were wanting to lock in supply ahead of Ramadan, which starts in early February. "Ramadan creates peak demand for a lot of our pulse crops [like chickpeas], and we see buyers wanting to have product pre-positioned at least one month ahead of Ramadan," he said. "So we're seeing some urgency from buyers trying to get product onboard vessels for key destination markets such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and the UAE, so it's in the market and ready for that Ramadan demand."
In its most recent crop forecast, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) predicted Australian chickpea production would fall by 52 per cent "to just over 1 million tonnes in 2026\u201327" due to significant cuts to area planted and expected lower yields in the major growing regions of northern New South Wales and Queensland. ABC Landline has been told that forecast may be "optimistic" and the overall crop might be even lower, which is another reason for buyer urgency.
Prices are expected to ease as harvest supply increases.