Where do lentils come from?

In 2024 Canada produced 2.4 million tonnes, 31% of the world's 7.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India followed with 23%, then Australia (16%), Kazakhstan (5.8%) and United States (5.2%). The top five account for 81%, 43 countries reported a crop and 4.8% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +67% over the ten years to 2024 and +16% on the previous year.

The gap between where lentils grow and where they are eaten defines the crop. Canada and Australia grow lentils they barely eat, on dry land where a short-season legume fits neatly into a cereal rotation and where harvest falls in settled weather. India and its neighbors eat lentils daily and grow less than they consume.

Color and size divide the crop again. Red lentils, dehulled and split, cook in minutes and dominate South Asian and Middle Eastern demand, while large green lentils hold their shape and go to Europe, North Africa and North America. Kazakhstan's rapid entry came from converting grain land, and most of its crop moves to Turkey (Türkiye).

Canada was the largest exporter of lentils (HS 071340) in 2024 with 38% of world export value, ahead of Australia (22%), on world trade of $4.2 billion (CEPII BACI). India was the largest importer with 20%.

Turkey appears near the top of both tables, and that is a processing business rather than a contradiction. It buys whole red lentils, dehulls, splits, polishes and repacks them, then re-exports into the Middle East and North Africa. Canada supplies both the raw material and, in competition, the finished article.

India is the market everything else orbits. Its own rabi harvest, its stocks and its import duty decide how much of the Canadian and Australian crop finds a home, and Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq take much of the rest.

There is no futures market for lentils and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. Prices are physical and specific: grower bids posted by Canadian and Australian processors for a named grade, fob offers from exporters, and mandi prices in India. Private newsletters publish assessments, but they are subscription products.

Much of the crop is sold before it is grown. Processors offer production contracts at a fixed price for a stated tonnage, usually with an act of God clause that releases the grower if the crop fails, and the balance is sold spot at harvest. Importing governments add a second layer, buying by public tender, and those awards are among the few prices anyone outside the trade can see.

India is the largest importer and moves its lentil duty between zero and punitive rates within a few seasons to manage domestic prices. With the size of its own rabi harvest, that decision determines whether Canadian and Australian growers face a deep market or a thin one.

Much of the world's exportable lentil supply comes from one dry region of western Canada, so a heat wave or drought there removes tonnage the rest of the world cannot replace. The 2021 Prairie drought cut the Canadian crop sharply and tightened export availability for a full year.

Rain at harvest stains and sprouts lentils and can drop a lot from human-consumption grade to feed within days. Because the premium sits in appearance for green lentils and milling yield for red, two crops of identical weight can be worth very different amounts.

Lentils fix nitrogen and break cereal disease cycles, as chickpeas do, but aphanomyces root rot persists in soil for years and forces long gaps between pulse crops. That caps how far area can expand in the established growing regions whatever the price does.

Kazakhstan and its neighbors have converted grain land to lentils and supply Turkey in volume, changing the arithmetic for Canadian and Australian sellers into the Mediterranean. Supply that arrives by rail and truck competes on different freight economics from supply shipped in containers.

Lentils are a small bushy annual, seeded shallow and often into standing cereal stubble that shelters the crop and holds moisture. They nodulate and fix their own nitrogen, flower and pod over a few weeks, and mature in roughly three months, short enough to fit between a cereal harvest and a hard frost.

Harvest is the difficult part. The plant is short and the lowest pods sit close to the ground, so growers either desiccate the crop and straight-cut it or swath and pick it up, and either way stones are a constant hazard. The seed is then cleaned, sized and color sorted.

Red lentils are processed further. The seed coat is scoured off and the cotyledons split, producing the fast-cooking orange splits sold across South Asia and the Middle East, and the splits are usually polished. Green lentils are sold whole with the seed coat intact, because the appearance is the product.

Lentils are almost entirely a food crop. Red splits cook down into dal, soups and purees in twenty minutes and need no soaking, which is much of their appeal, while green and brown lentils hold their shape for salads and canning. Lentil flour and lentil protein have found a place in snacks, pasta and plant-based foods.

The by-products are feed and fertility. Hulls, screenings and chaff from cleaning go to livestock, and lentil straw is fed as fodder. The larger by-product is agronomic: the nitrogen the crop fixes and the disease break it gives the following cereal, which is why growers plant lentils even in a poor price year.

Canadian lentils move from farm bins to pulse plants across southern Saskatchewan, where they are cleaned, sized and color sorted and red lentils are dehulled and split. From there they are containerized inland and railed to Vancouver, Montreal and Thunder Bay, or trucked south into the United States.

Australia runs a similar chain out of South Australia and Victoria through Melbourne, Adelaide and Port Kembla, while Kazakhstan's crop moves overland by rail and truck toward Turkey. Turkey then acts as the region's processing and re-export hub, so a lentil can cross several borders before it is eaten.

The vulnerabilities are concentration and containers. One dry region supplies much of world trade, so a single bad season is a world event, and because pulses move in boxes rather than bulk, container availability and freight rates feed straight through into the delivered price in South Asia.