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WI | Ive grown food grade beans for a number of years, this year I didn't do any but I will be this coming year. It all depends on what variety(s) your looking at and what the premium is because most companies are very picky. For instance if my delivered beans had more than 1 gmo bean per 1000 it would of got rejected, if the seed coat was damaged it got rejected, if they were dirty or dusty it got rejected, if they were too light or wet they got rejected, they are especially picky about immature and green beans so if there's to many greens they get rejected, if there's weed seeds they may reject the load depending on the amount otherwise they will dock a certain percentage there are a lot of rejection points for most companies that I've found and worked with. The contracts are long and you have to read all the regulations and understand fully what they expect. If you plant gmo beans also it's not a good idea because a half of a pound of round up ready bean seeds somehow getting mixed in is going to turn into a total rejection. Another thing to think about is where your beans are coming from. The companies I worked with had their own seed you would buy to plant so you had no worries of any mixing that could of happened somewhere along the line. The big kicker is if you don't have your own combine, grain cart, storage and trucks your going to have a hard time finding a custom operator that's going to go through his combine, cart and trucks with a fine tooth combe, blower and vacuum to get out all the round up and LL beans they combined before. There's opportunity for profit by making the right choices and making sure your dedicated to the elevated management requirement you need to do in order to make them acceptable. There's good and bad, more good than bad in my opinion but everything needs to be done exactly the way they say it needs to be. The first year was tough because your always thinking "what if" but after you know the routine, what needs to be done and how along with how to avoid cross contamination it gets easier. I won't plant any food grade bean variety unless they offer at least a $1.50+ premium over the market price because otherwise it's not worth all the hassle and possible headache because there's some varieties that you just can't take to your local elevator to sell if they get rejected. In regards to yield lag you will talk to people that say yes there is and you'll talk to people that say no there isn't and from my experience the people that you talk to that claim there's a yield lag with conventional are seed salesmen/dealers that don't have any first hand knowledge and want to sell you that $275 bag of triple stack whatever corn or the $40 bag of RR or LL beans instead of a $120 bag of corn or a 50 lb $27 bag of beans that doesnt have to fall under the 140,000 count limit the gmo's do. 7 years ago I quit growing gmo grain and haven't looked back. Other than the first year every other year I have always showed a higher yield over the gmo varieties, the proof is in the tank and on the weigh slips. I've never done as good with gmo beans than what I'm doing now, every year is consistently higher yields verses neighbors crops in the same maturity range but RR or LL and the same goes for corn. There's been numerous years that I'll plant the conventional variety and neighbors or people I talk to planted the gmo version of the same variety and I always have at least a 5% higher yield with my "old school" conventionals. There are reasons you are starting to see companies carry more conventional varieties along with companies solely dedicated to conventional non-gmo crops than there were in the past years. The reasons you should research your varieties is because Two years ago I planted a bunch of a specialty variety that is used for speciality food in Taiwan and China and those were 6000-6500 seeds per lb (size of bb's or smaller) anyways we planted a few different varieties that year that were all conventional so I wasn't worried about gmo contamination (I haven't planted any gmo crops for 6 years) but every processor I ever worked with are particular about keeping all varieties separate and they pull a lot of samples and test each load very thoroughly so I made a round around the field and dumped it into my box to haul in locally with the rest of my clean out beans from switching varieties and the local elevators wouldn't take them because of the size. So like I said there's good and bad and if your dedicated and particular with how you operate and realize that extra care needs to be given to certain aspects of planting, maintaining, harvesting, storage and transportation you'll do just fine. After growing food grade beans, corn and wheat for years now I'm used to the extra steps and extra care needed and don't know how the organic guys do it, these food grade crops can be difficult enough to manage and get the most out of without having to worry about all the crap the organic producers have to deal with and face especially with fertilizers, weed and disease control. More power to all you organic guys reading this but it's defiantly not for me that's for sure. You can send me a personal message if you want to chat more about the food grade beans if you want. Good Luck!
Edited by HilltopGrain 1/26/2016 15:51
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Non GMO Food Grade Beans
