Dylan Karley is General Manager of North Central Commodities and the Johnstown Bean Company processing plant in North Dakota. 

Talk to me through sales at North Central. What are the important pulses and destination countries?

We primarily sell into Mexico, but also we sell a lot to South America, the Caribbean, and some into Europe and Africa. Our main pulses are pinto beans and black beans – we also deal in some lentils and navy beans but I don't process or clean any of those here, I buy them from outsourced companies. I still try to keep the outsourcing fairly local and buy from as many North Dakotan companies as I can.

Sometimes I'll dabble in other commodities, but pinto beans and black beans would be 95% of my business with most of it going to Mexico. We have a distinct advantage transporting down to Mexico from here because our rail system links up with theirs, meaning we never need boats and can take them all the way down to Mexico City.

Rail freight is about a third of the cost of truck freight and half of the cost of maritime freight. While we are one of the furthest states away in what we call the 'North Harvest' region, the difference between leaving North Dakota and Nebraska with Rail freight is only about $0.50 per hundredweight, so nothing too significant.

I'd love to get a picture of the bean acreage this year in North Dakota – how are things looking?

The biggest acreage is in pinto beans – about 65 to 70% of all beans in North Dakota. That's going to be down 10 to 15% this year. The main reason for this is the competitive prices of soybeans, corn, and sunflowers – any of the crops that compete for this slot in the crop rotation. All of those commodities had strong prices this year.

Compared to a year ago pinto prices are down about 20%, adding to the grower sentiment for planting fewer pintos. On the black bean front, I think North Dakota will be down, but Minnesota will be up and will offset the difference – I think we're going to be fairly even in the North Harvest region. 

Nationally, I think we're going to be up a little bit on black beans, but kidney beans are going to be down 25% – some people think maybe 35%. That's because of a large overproduction last year that’s caused a bit of an oversupply. Navy beans look to be flat or down by around 10%, and I've had reports from the lentil side that acreage is flat or down 5%.

There’s been some serious rain in North Dakota – how is this going to affect this year’s crop?

Overall we look to be rolling into planting season now with decent conditions, so I expect our crop to get a good start. We're going to be planting on the later side – it's been cold and wet and that's pushed us about two weeks behind where we would normally like to be with all of our crops. By the time we get to edible beans, things will be maybe a week behind schedule.

We had a near-record amount of snow this year – the second snowiest winter on record in eastern North Dakota. However, we did have a decent slow spring thaw which is best for us because if it’s too fast you end up with a lot of flooding.

It continued to stay cold and rainy through April and didn't start to change until the first or second week of May, so we started planting in some areas but the rain across the states over the last two weeks held things back. Certain areas are nervous they might not get all their crop planted, but on the east side where we, and the majority of edible beans are, things aren't sitting too bad. There were areas over the course of a week that got 5-6 inches of rain, which is a lot! But it fell in a window when the crop wasn't planted yet so it didn't do any damage at all. 

We're getting the heat we need now and we’re able to get everything planted in a hurry, so I don't think it's going to greatly affect us going forward. That’s said, the forecasts are predicting more rain so we’ll have to wait and see.

“We're getting the heat we need now and we’re able to get everything planted in a hurry, so I don't think it's going to greatly affect us going forward. That’s said, the forecasts are predicting more rain so we’ll have to wait and see.”

You mentioned the ongoing strong commodities prices. How has this affected edible bean acreage?

Soy would be the biggest competition, but then some other specialty crops compete with pulses, like sunflower, canola, and corn. Corn can take acres from many different spots in the rotation, but soybeans are the number one competitor for pulses and its price has been very strong worldwide for the past couple of years.

How do you feel about pulse consumption in the US – do you think it has risen? What avenues can the pulse industry take to increase consumption?

I work on consumption a lot with the US Dry Bean Council, and people around the world are working hard on increasing pulses in people’s diets. One thing is that the plant-based protein movement is huge – it's real, and it's here to stay – whether that's a move towards vegetarian diets, or to using yellow pea protein to make meat substitutes. Whichever it is, it all works together and beans are a very big part of it.

In the US, we're definitely seeing a shift in that consumption and beans are gaining momentum towards being a more popular, trendy item. You see them a lot more on store shelves and in healthy grocery stores.

There are also a lot more products using ingredients derived from different beans, peas, and lentils. People are just becoming more and more aware of what they're putting in their body in this country, and as people become more health and sustainability-conscious, beans are perfect to play a role in that change.

How have you developed North Central Commodities and Johnstown Bean Company over recent years and what plans do you have for the future?

For Johnstown bean company we've mostly been expanding our infrastructure to increase our processing capacity, whereas with North Central Commodities I've been developing it by branching out to market many different sources of beans outside of our own produce – I've made that the focus over the last ten years and I’ll continue working to develop the export side and help us gain even greater expertise in the areas we know well.

We focused on Mexico over the last three years as during the pandemic, when a lot of companies lost touch in the export markets, I had an office in Mexico and feet on the ground which meant we could retain our export market share and even grow it quite a bit.

I’ve built our company to buy and sell a lot more from different sources, increasing volume, flexibility, and our capacity to ship more. Over the next few years I'd like to continue growing that and finding good partner suppliers I can rely on to have the highest quality beans and continue to develop the customer base. I want high performing customers – I don't want to sell to everyone, I want to sell to the great ones and build up those relationships.