Pulse Crops

Pulse Crops

Pulse Crops. I'm Greg Martin with Washington Ag Today.

The northwest is one of the largest growing regions for pulse crops including dry peas, lentils and chickpeas. A recent report on planted acreage showed an increase according to Tim McGreevy with the USA Pea and Lentil Council.

McGREEVY: We're looking at a little increase in our overall pulse production both here in the Pacific Northwest and across the country we're going to have a little over 1.6 million acres of peas, lentils and chickpeas that we're planted. Everyone got it in the ground actually pretty early across the whole growing region

Planting in Washington and Idaho was done by the end of April.

McGREEVY: A little bit later in Montana and North Dakota but really good shape mostly in May and so we had good planting conditions, pretty good soil moisture coming into the month of May. And then wow! At least for Washington and Idaho and a pretty good parts of Montana we had a blast furnace heat for most of the month of June. That's certainly going to have an impact. We figure it will have some impact on yield

Some growing areas in Montana had some severe storms then really dry weather so their crop will be very slim. But now harvest is moving forward.

McGREEVY: There's been some early harvest happening here in the Pacific Northwest. Down in the Dayton and Walla Walla area they've had a pretty good start to all their peas. Looks like yields will be down a little bit. A lot of 1500 pound and of course chickpeas are a long ways off yet.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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