5-9 IAT HUMMUS

 The Wall Street Journal reports that Hummus is conquering America.

A recent report in the Wall Street Journal tells us that tobacco farmers are opening up their fields to chickpeas because of the popularity of hummus. So we take out of that that Virginia farmers are trading cancer for good health. Not to be defensive, but Pacific Northwest farmers have beaten people in the tobacco belt according to Idaho Pea and Lentil Commission researcher,  Todd Scholz. “What is the potential for Idaho farmers to tap into this boom? Honestly, the Idaho and Washington farmers have already done so. In the last five years we have gone from maybe 10 to 12,000 acres of chickpeas to almost 70,000. So the Virginia farmers are catching up. In the Pacific Northwest, pulses have been part of the rotation since 1920. So  peas and lentils have been part of this region for a long time. In the last 5 to 10 years chickpeas have emerged and the prices are very nice and the return is very good and we have been very lucky for the last two  to three years and there has been a real interest in chickpeas. It is all because of hummus. In the last five years we have probably doubled or tripled our acreage and that would indicate that there would be a decline in the price because the supply had increased so much but in fact, the price has remained strong and even increased because hummus has got such a great demand for the product.