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Agricultural Commodities

Beans

Dry beans are annual legumes grown for their seeds. There are many varieties of dry beans, including white, kidney, black beans. Many varieties of beans consumed today were originally grown in the new world and brought back by European explorers beginning with Christopher Columbus. Beans are a vital source of protein and staple food of much of the world today. Beans are excellent whole food and are a recommended part of a balanced diet.

Chickpeas

The oldest records of the cultivated chickpeas are from Turkey, where it was grown approximately 7,500 years ago. From there, the crop spread and became a staple food across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Today, chickpeas are popular throughout China, India, North and Eastern Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Australia.

Flaxseed

Over thousands of years, flaxseed has been cultivated and has had a variety of health and industrial uses. Linseed is the variation used for consumption and the linseed we process nowadays is mainly brought in from Kazakhstan and Russia and smaller amounts from other countries including the UK, Germany, Sweden, Moldavia, and Poland.  The superior quality of flaxseed crop is strongly influenced by the moderate growing temperatures and longer photoperiod (hours of sunlight). Today, Canada is the top flax producer in the world, accounting for approximately 40 percent of the world’s flax production. Flaxseed is characterized by a strong combination of oil content, iodine value, and low moisture content.

Popcorn Kernels

Corn is a hybrid annual of the cereal family and one of the most important seeds and feeds plant in the world. Corn is ground into flour and grits and is used to manufacture oil and sugar. Certain varieties of corn are grown as feed, and young plants are used as a green feed or as silage. In a rotational system, corn is planted after winter cultures, spring wheat, legumes, or potatoes. Highest producing countries of corn kernels include the United States, Brazil, China, and Argentina.

Oats

While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal, the rolled oats are used as livestock feed. Oats are a nutrient-rich food associated with lower blood cholesterol when consumed regularly. It is best grown in temperate regions. It has a lower summer heat requirement and greater tolerance of rain. Oats are an annual plant and can be planted either in autumn (for late summer harvest) or in the spring (for early autumn harvest). Russia is the largest producer of Oat, other major producers are Canada, Poland, and Australia.

Crude Sunflower Oil

Crude sunflower oil is a vegetable oil that still needs to be refined. Sunflower is the most popular oilseed grown in Ukraine, with about 6 million hectares sown. For most farmers, sunflower is their most profitable crop. Sunflower also has advantages for processing closer to the farmer rather than to the consumer. The low density of sunflower seed compared to rapeseed and soybean increases the comparable transportation costs for sunflower seed.

Lentils

One of the first crops ever domesticated, lentils are a nutritious food legume that is one of the primary sources of protein for much of the world today. Canada is the world’s largest producer of lentils, followed by India, Turkey, and the United States. Lentils can also be processed into flour, which can be added to cereal flour to make bread, cakes and baby foods.

Peas

Peas are the predominant export crop in world trade and represent an estimated 40% of the total trade in pulses. Canada, the United States, and the European Economic Community are the three largest exporters of peas in the world. Peas are among the four most cultivated legumes next to soybeans, groundnuts and beans Dried peas, a small but nutritionally mighty member of the legume family, are a very good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber.

Oilseeds

Oilseed crops have been grown all over the world and are considered important crops due to their economic value. Oilseed crops are primarily grown for edible oil. Recently, it attracted more attention due to an increasing demand for its healthy vegetable oils, livestock feeds, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, and other oleochemical industrial uses. The increased interest resulted in an 82% expansion of oilseed crop cultivation areas and about a 240% increase in total world production over the last 30 years.

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