Pulses Export Market: What I'm Seeing on Chickpeas, Lentils, and Mung Beans Right Now

By Sufyan · 2026-05-27 · 4 min read

Last Tuesday I had three buyers ask me the same question within six hours. "Where are you sourcing chickpeas from this season?" One was in Dubai, one in Karachi (yes, we sell domestically too), one in Antwerp. And honestly, my answer was different for each of them.

Because that's the thing about pulses right now. The origin game has changed. Five years ago you could pick one country and stick with it for the year. Not anymore.

Let me walk you through what's actually happening on the ground with the three pulses I get asked about most — chickpeas, lentils, and mung beans.

Chickpeas: The Origin Map Got Messy

Kabuli chickpeas used to be a fairly predictable trade. Australia and Mexico for the premium 9mm and 10mm caliber, Russia and Turkey for the mid-range, and India eating most of the Desi production for domestic chana dal.

Then 2023 happened. Australia had a 38% drop in chickpea production that year and prices in Karachi wholesale markets jumped almost overnight. Buyers who'd been comfortable with one supplier suddenly had to learn three new origins in a quarter.

Here's what I tell our chickpeas exporter clients now: don't lock yourself into one country. We currently quote from four origins depending on the buyer's spec — Australian Kabuli for the Middle East canning houses, Russian Kabuli for African distributors who care more about protein than caliber, and Pakistani Desi for South Asian diaspora markets in the UK and Canada.

The pricing spread between origins can be $180-220 per metric ton on the same caliber. That's not small. A 25-container annual program means real money sitting on the table if you pick wrong.

One thing I got wrong early — I used to think buyers wanted the cheapest origin that matched their spec. They don't. They want predictability. A buyer in Jeddah told me last year he'd pay a $40/MT premium just to avoid origin-switching mid-contract because his retail packaging is printed with country-of-origin and he can't change labels every shipment.

Lentils: Canada Still Rules, But Watch Turkey and Australia

If you're doing lentils import, Canada is still where roughly 60% of the global traded volume comes from. Saskatchewan red lentils, green lentils, French green — Canada has the infrastructure, the cleaning lines, the polishing capacity nobody else has matched.

But. (And this is a real but.)

Turkish red lentils have quietly taken back market share in the Middle East and North Africa over the last 18 months. Closer freight, faster transit, and the Turkish processors got serious about color sorting. We've moved several of our Gulf clients to Turkish-origin red splits for the football lentil sizes because the delivered cost into Jebel Ali was running $90 cheaper per ton.

Australian lentils are the dark horse. Strong crop last season, decent quality, and Australian exporters have been aggressive on pricing to win Indian government tenders. If you're a food distributor watching the lentils import market, set up an Australian quote line. You don't have to buy. Just know the number.

For smaller buyers — say, anyone doing less than 10 containers a year — I'd honestly just stick with Canadian No. 2 grade and not overthink it. The origin arbitrage games are for people doing 100+ containers.

Mung Beans: The Quietest Big Market

Nobody writes about mung beans. Which is funny, because the global trade is somewhere north of 800,000 metric tons annually and growing every year on the back of plant-protein demand and the explosion of moong dal consumption in diaspora communities.

Myanmar used to dominate. The political situation there has scrambled things and a lot of buyers can't get clean documentation anymore — banks in Europe especially are jumpy about Myanmar-origin paperwork. So volume has shifted.

Where to? Three places, mostly:

Pakistan grows mung beans too, mostly in Sindh, and we ship modest volumes — usually to buyers who want to consolidate a container with rice and pulses together. That's actually a real cost saver people forget about. Mixed containers of rice plus pulses can drop your per-kg landed cost by 8-12% versus separate shipments, depending on the route.

What This Means If You're Buying

Look, the old way of running a pulses export program was simple: pick an origin, sign an annual contract, stop thinking about it. That model's broken.

What I'd recommend instead:

  1. Keep an active quote relationship with at least two origins per pulse you import. Even if you only buy from one, you need the second number to negotiate.
  2. Watch the weather reports for Saskatchewan in May, Australia in October, and the Indian monsoon in June-July. These three windows move global pulse prices more than anything else.
  3. Don't ignore freight. A $30/MT FOB advantage gets erased fast if container rates from that port spike. We've seen Karachi to Mombasa rates swing 40% in a quarter.
  4. Quality specs matter more than they used to. Buyers downstream are getting pickier — splits percentage, moisture, foreign matter, color uniformity. Tighten your contracts.

I'm happy to share specific quotes if you email me through the Acme Global site. Even if you don't buy from us, sometimes it helps to have a second number in your inbox just to know where the market is.

What origins are you currently running, and what's hurting most — price, quality, or paperwork?

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