Buyers will look elsewhere for supplies if Manitoba farmers don’t keep planting edible beans, warns a major Ontario bean buyer.
However, Jim Barclay of Hensall District Co-op wasn’t able to give Manitoba farmer Curtis Sims much of a response to the challenge of why Manitoba farmers should care.
“You either have to be a contrarian or a fool to grow edible beans this year,” said Sims.
“Your prices are so far out.… Soybeans are up again today and you guys are down here. It’s just ridiculous.”
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Sims said the bean market appears to have an attention span “of a five-year- old” and sends confusing signals to growers.
“Everything past thee months is a complete surprise. No idea what’s going to happen beyond three months.…
“How can we get this market to actually try to react in the same real world as the other crops and respond so we don’t get these fast ups and downs and frustrations and so on?”
Barclay, whose company works in the middle between farmers and end users, couldn’t offer a promise of better bean market clarity in the future.
“I don’t know if there’s a rebuttal I can give to it, because I’m not a direct end user, but I appreciate your comments,” said Barclay.
Manitoba’s edible bean industry appears to be in terminal decline, with acreage collapsing in the past decade.
Navy bean acres have dropped to 30,000 projected for 2011 from 120,000 acres in 2001.
The story is similar across North America, where edible bean acreage is expected to fall by 30 percent because of weak prices caused by hefty carryout 2010-11 stocks in pintos and black beans.
However, Barclay said navy bean carryout stocks should drop drastically to 14 million pounds from 172 million lb.
New crop navy bean prices are 32 cents per pound, he added, compared to old crop prices of 25 to 27 cents per pound.
Navy bean acres are expected to slump by 30 percent, regardless of the price increase, mainly because of the fast expansion of the soybean crop in Manitoba.
The steady rise of soybean acres in Manitoba since 2001 is a mirror image of the decline of edible bean acres.
Farmers have embraced soybeans in Manitoba.
The crop reached 500,000 acres last year and some analysts are calling for 750,000 acres in 2011.
The crop is easy to grow and market and high prices are attracting growers’ attention
Barclay said Manitoba farmers need to understand that buyers will turn their attention from Manitoba’s declining acreage to the expanding acreage in North Dakota if they can’t find beans.
“It’s about sustainability,” said Barclay.
“We need to support the end users with acreage or they will get it elsewhere.”
He said the industry needs to find a way to make beans enticing again because he thinks more than just price is behind the shift from edible beans to soybeans.
“We have had some pretty good prices from 2001 to 2011. What is it about the soybeans that everybody likes so much and how can we bring some of that into the dry beans to keep that sustainable?”
Production practices such as direct harvesting could draw farmers back to beans, Barclay said.
In Ontario, about 90 percent of edible beans are direct harvested.
