By Jim Mimiaga

"It’s the best bean harvest this generation," proclaimed Brad White of this year’s bumper crop, as nearby trucks on his Pleasant View farm were being filled to the brim with the popular legume.

Growers are taking advantage of recent warm, dry days to thresh the region’s trademark crop out of the ground and into storage elevators, which are filling up fast.

"We have about 65 percent of the harvest under cover now. If we can get just another week of good weather we will be in real good shape," said Rodney Tanner, manager of Midland Bean Company in Dove Creek, noting that some of the product has suffered a bit from recent frosts.

This year’s bumper crop, the first since the 1950s, amounts to more than just a huge "hill of beans" for farmers though; it means a slightly better price for the commodity too.

"Yields are up per acre, thanks to the wet growing season this year, and so is the amount paid to farmers," Tanner said. "Overall quality is excellent, and the yield is better than I’ve ever seen."

Producers can expect an average of $20 per 100-lb. sack of beans, up from an average of $16 last year when the crop was damaged due to severely muddy conditions during the harvest.

In 1998 Colorado dryland beans averaged 440 pounds per acre. This year, growers in southwest Colorado are enjoying between 800 and 1200 pounds per acre, according to agriculture observers. Any yields over 500 pounds per acre for dryland bean farms constitute a bumper crop.

"They are coming in real clean this year. Everyone is very pleased," said Vickie Cooke, office manager for Adobe Milling, also of Dove Creek.

Last year Colorado harvested 155,000 acres of pinto beans, contributing nearly $48 million to the state’s $12 billion agricultural economy, according to state statistics. This year will likely surpass that amount. In 1998 dryland pinto bean production in Montezuma and Dolores counties represented 13 percent of total production in the six southwest counties that produce non-irrigated beans. Nationwide the bean market is flooded, keeping the price farmers receive for their crop locally low.

"There are a lot of beans right now across the nation. It’s a real tough market," Cooke said.