Overseas customers fuel baby lima bean market

Though by no means a widely planted crop—with about 7,600 acres in production this year—baby lima beans enjoy a unique market in Japan.

Depending on the year, market conditions and price, 50 percent to 80 percent of the state's baby-lima crop is exported annually to Japan, said Nathan Sano, manager of the California Dry Bean Advisory Board. Most baby lima beans are used to make a sweet bean paste known as "An" or "Anko," which is a key ingredient in many traditional Japanese confections such as mochi and manju.

"In California, we don't produce any other (bean) variety that enjoys that large of a percentage of our production going to export, and Japan is overwhelmingly the end user," said Dave Kirsten, a bean dealer for Kirsten Co. in Lodi.

Even though Azuki beans are widely used to make a red bean paste—the most common type of An consumed in Japan—white bean paste also has a long history in Japanese cuisine and is particularly popular in regions such as western Japan, said Jeff McNeill, senior trade representative in Japan for the U.S. Dry Bean Council.

"Confection makers like to offer a variety of colors and products to consumers, so white bean paste is very useful for that," he said.

With their clear, white color and neutral flavor, baby lima beans—grown almost exclusively in California because of its climate and long growing season—allow food manufacturers to infuse different flavors and colors into the paste, Sano said. Known for their quality and food-safety standards, the beans also command a premium—although marketers agree California baby limas face increasing competition from other white beans, including butter beans from Myanmar, Great Northern beans from other U.S. states and otebo beans, which are produced in Japan and Canada.

"The California baby lima is still the preferred variety in that (Japanese) market, but we certainly do not have an exclusivity there," Kirsten said.

At their farm in Meridian, Chris Capaul and his brother Jerome have been busy harvesting this year's baby lima crop, which Capaul described as lower in yield than last year due to higher temperatures during the growing season.

Capaul's family has been growing baby limas for more than 50 years. Unlike many California farmers who grow beans as a rotational crop, baby limas are Capaul's main crop, which he rotates with rice. He said back when his father was growing baby limas in the 1960s, annual state production hovered around 800,000 hundredweight, with most of it marketed domestically. This year, California growers are expected to produce 187,640 cwt., according to estimates from the California Bean Shippers Association.

"Lima beans used to be a very popular bean for consumption in the United States," he said, noting traditional dishes such as ham hocks and lima beans. "But Americans just don't eat beans anymore. They don't want to take the time to cook them."

Stanislaus County farmer Daniel Bays, whose family are longtime lima-bean growers in the Patterson and Westley area, said he puts dry beans in a similar category as canned fruits and vegetables—preserved foods that have lost their appeal in a modern era that favors fresh foods that are also more convenient to cook.

"When you mention lima beans to a lot of people, they have a vision or a memory of being forced to eat them when they were younger, and it's not a pleasure-taste memory," he said. "Part of it is probably in how they've been cooked and the reluctance of people to go back and try them again."

Dry beans were most popular during World War II, when annual consumption in the U.S. peaked at 11 pounds per capita, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Consumption has stayed below 8 pounds since the early 1960s, bottoming out in the late 1970s and early 1980s at 5.5 pounds.

A similar trend has been taking place in Japan, said Nelson Parreira, a bean dealer at Beans R4U in Tulare. As a result, the Asian nation is not importing as many baby limas as it used to.

Kirsten, who has been in the bean business for more than 35 years, said there has been a "fairly steady drop in demand" beginning in the mid-1980s, as Japan's younger generation became less inclined to cook and eat traditional foods such as An paste while favoring prepared foods that suit their busy lifestyles.

"Everybody wants fast food nowadays," Parreira said.

At the same time, California has seen a gradual decline in baby lima bean production that's consistent with reduced demand from Japan, Kirsten added.

Gene Bays, Daniel Bays' grandfather, has been growing baby limas for more than 60 years. Like Kirsten, the elder Bays said he started noticing a decline in the export market about 30 years ago, but it happened so gradually that growers were slow to catch on.

"We didn't realize it at the time, but it soon caught up with us because we were losing (the market)," he said. "The bean deal isn't like it used to be."

Having been on several trade missions to Japan with the U.S. Dry Bean Council, Capaul has visited bean-paste manufacturers and bakeries that use the paste. He's also seen up close the difference between paste made with California baby lima beans and those made with Myanmar's less-expensive butter beans. He said though the Myanmar bean paste looks different, with a slightly different consistency and color, he couldn't taste the difference between the Myanmar product and paste made with California beans.

"It's very hard for us to compete because Myanmar can ship their beans into Japan for half of what we want to sell ours for," he said. "Baby limas are the best, but not everybody would spend as much for it, so they use the other beans. Our market is really getting smaller."

Japanese importers did give U.S. trade delegates one sign of encouragement: In the next five years, Japan is expected to adopt country-of-origin labeling. With the Golden State's reputation for quality and food safety, this should help California baby lima beans, Capaul said.

Sano said other efforts are being made to promote dry beans and show Japanese customers more ways to eat them. McNeill said even though bean paste is the traditional form for which beans are used in Japan, newer, Western-based applications are emerging, including beans used in salads, soups and chili.

Getting Americans to adopt some of the ways beans are used in confectionary applications in Asian cultures "may cook up some more popularity for beans in the domestic market," Daniel Bays said.

(Ching Lee is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at clee@cfbf.com.)