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Successful year for Michigan Thumb farmers

The executive director of the Michigan Bean Commission says final 2015 dry bean production yields are expected to be similar to last year. Joe Cramer tells Brownfield farmers ended the year with above average yields.  “From a quality standpoint, from a yield standpoint, everything that we were sort of dreading as we went through a tough growing season proved to be ok.”  He says, “We didn’t really have a lot of bumps, so our biggest challenge today is the market.”

Janna Fritz farms 1,200 acres of corn, soybeans, dry edible beans and wheat in Pigeon, in Michigan’s Thumb. She tells Brownfield 2015 was a really great year, with corn yields some of the best they’ve ever had.  “The navy beans and blacks also turned out very well.”  She says, “We would hope that would continue, that is our more specialty crop we grow on the farm and tend to put a lot more intensive management into those dry beans.”  Fritz says a lot of the success this season was because of Mother Nature, but for next year her farm is planning on using more precision planting and data analytics to improve yields.

She tells Brownfield while area farmers are seeing soft dry bean prices because of an oversupply, her farm is in it for the long haul.  “It is our commodity we tend to focus on so we are going to maintain our acres, we are going to move a little bit more into black beans this year as opposed to navy beans.”

Fritz says next year the farm plans to stay consistent with their annual crop rotations.

AUDIO: Interview with Janna Fritz