North American Beans Finding New Normal

VANCOUVER - Dec 9/05 - SNS -- North American dry edible bean production ended up much larger than initially expected, with USDA boosting the estimated size of the U.S. crop 3% to 1.233 million metric tons (MT), while Statistics Canada pegged edible bean output in Canada at 329,700 MT, up 11% from October.

This lifts total North American edible bean production to 1.562 million MT, up from 1.03 million last year. This is also well above the previous five-year average production level for Canada and the United States of 1.368 million MT.

Production in Canada is not broken out by class. Statistics Canada pegged white bean output at 117,900 MT, up from 73,390 MT last year; while its colored bean harvest was estimated at 201,100 MT, up from 149,500 MT. The problem faced by Statistics Canada is production of many classes of beans is too small to generate reasonable accurate estimates.

The USDA breaks out production by class, revealing that most of the increase was accounted for by pinto and pea beans. Pinto bean output jumped from 354,441 MT last year to 4,666 MT this year, the largest crop since the 598,204 MT harvest of 2002. Pea bean output came in at 179,216 MT, versus 97,160 MT last year. Production of that class of bean remains at the low end of its historical range, with little prospect of significant production gains in the future.

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