November 5, 2025
Independent bean industry consultant Vicente Mendoza discusses the Mexican harvest, the challenge of weak prices, and how farmers can’t win – even in a year of stellar yields.
“A study I conducted for the US Dry Bean Council in August concluded that approximately 900,000 ha of beans were seeded — the government originally calculated around 1.4 million ha, but lowered that to 1.2 million ha in their most recent report.
This year’s cycle was shaped by a plentiful availability of water, which encouraged producers to seed not only beans but also other types of crops – some producers dedicated part of their bean-growing land to pumpkin or wheat. We've seen this diversification of crops a lot over recent years because farmers want to mitigate the risk of crops like beans that demand high water use. They've preferred to have a mixture of beans and forage, for example. There are fewer problems with a split like that.
My calculations show that those 900,000 ha should produce around 700 KMT, given a yield of 780 kg/ha on average. Recently, we’ve had yields of around 600 kg/ha, so this would be a significant jump. The bean crop should be a three-way split between black beans, pinto beans, and coloured beans at 53%, 35%, and 16%, respectively.”
READ THE FULL ARTICLEMexico’s 2024 harvest is delivering abundant yields across black, pinto, and coloured beans — but quality issues in irrigated zones and collapsing prices are clouding the outlook for growers.
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