LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) has issued its latest Dry Bean Stocks Report, a publication designed to help dry bean growers.
The report consists of a chart specifying what kind and how many dry beans were in storage as of Aug. 31. It’s the 12th annual issue in a series of reports sent at the request of the Michigan Bean Commission and Michigan Bean Shippers Assoc., according to MDARD.
Beginning in August 2006, its producer security services section assumed responsibility for issuing these reports; therefore, data for intervening years are not available.
The report contains no information for the years 2002-05, but does have information from 1996-2001, 2006 and 2011 – though the reference dates for some of those years are different.
More than one report per year may have been published in the early years, said Jeff Haarer, manager of the producer security services division at MDARD. Dry bean stocks are not included in the USDA system of grain stocks reports. Dry bean stocks data included in this report were tabulated from reports grain elevator operators in the state submit to MDARD monthly.
Commercial grain elevator operators in Michigan held nearly 1.05 million pounds of dry beans in storage as of Aug. 31. The quantity on hand included 558,000 pounds of navy beans, 358,000 of black beans, 50,000 of small red beans and 80,000 of all other kinds.
Stocks account for all beans in commercial off-farm storage and include a small portion of non-Michigan grown products, MDARD said. An estimate of the quantity of dry beans held on farms is not included in the report.
The report has some interesting dynamics to it this year because growers sold more than the usual amount of beans – and yet much of it remained in inventory, said Joe Cramer, executive director of the Michigan Bean Commission.
This may mean sales have slowed "a little bit" this year, he said.
Growers sold heavily; buyers who haven’t shipped yet own most of the 1.04 million pounds in inventory, he said. The industry refers to this as "sold, unshipped."
There is more than one seller and buyer in the process of marketing beans. "Buyers are taking a bit longer to take all the beans out of inventory," he stated. "Canners haven’t taken it from the first buyer; that’s what’s slowed down."
Processors are the first buyers of beans and canners are the last buyers. Canners also have a great deal say in who grows beans, and where.
According to the report, dry bean growers had nearly 5 million pounds of dry beans in storage as of Dec. 31, 1996. This year it was just over 1 million. What happened?
According to Cramer, much of it was a bad flood in 1986, which destroyed a lot of the dry bean crop in Michigan. "Canners decided they wanted to spread out the risk by promoting bean production in North Dakota," he explained.
As a result, dry bean production dropped off dramatically in Michigan; recently, though, production in the state has picked up. The total amount of beans in storage this year is significantly higher than the average of the past nine years.
