US kidney bean production and exports / 8 insights with Minnesota’s Green Valley Bean - Pulse Pod

“The slow start and wet spring have meant yields a little bit short of what they usually are this time around.”
“We won't know the difference the difficulties in Argentina has made to the kidney bean market just yet – we have to get to our harvest and see where we are at, as well.”
“I've been doing white kidney beans for 30 years and haven't exported many at all, but I'm sure we will see some interest in them this year.”

John Berthold on…what's new with Green Valley Bean

We are a kidney bean processor located in Park Rapids, Minnesota – we handle dark red kidney (DRK), light red kidney (LRK), white kidney, and some Cranberry beans and small red beans but we actually suffered a fire in May 2021, losing our processing plant and warehouses. We completely rebuilt and this year is the first full year back with facilities running again – I got through a really busy year last year and we’re ready to do it all over again!

We just started handling Cranberry beans and small red beans again – a couple of local growers came to us and wanted to try them out and we've been able to accommodate it and make it work so far.

The bean harvest got going a little bit later than normal. That’s mainly due to a cold, wet spring that meant a little later planting season, but it’s been quite dry lately here and I hate to say but we could use little rain to put moisture into things. You have to be careful what you wish for though – you don’t want too much!

Yields are a little bit down from last year. The last couple of years we've had very, very good yields – in our area, at least. The slow start and wet spring have meant yields a little bit short of what they usually are this time around.

Dark red kidney acres are actually up, partly in response to market conditions and also because acres were pushed way down due to a massive carryover we've been struggling through over the last few years. Processors and growers responded to strong pandemic demand and nearly doubled production. Kidneys are a small market and can be easily overproduced – I hope we don’t forget that moving forward.

Now we've made our way through that and acres are up to accommodate the demand in the market – I'd say we're up something close to 30% in total. However, with the yields being off it might not be quite as much as you would think. Light red kidney is the same – at least what we are – but we've seen a shifting of acres from the Colorado/Nebraska area that means almost two thirds of all US light red kidney production is now in Minnesota.

Weather for harvesting has been good and the harvest is progressing fast – I expect it will be finished later this week. Production-wise I think we’re looking at around 65,000 tonnes of DRK and 32,000 tonnes of LRK.