The Manitoba Agronomists Conference took place online this week.

Provincial Pulse Specialist Dennis Lange gave a presentation on dry beans.

"We ended up with about 185,000 acres of dry beans in the province, which is up from what we've seen in previous years," he said. "Most times in the last number of years, we've been kind of averaging around the 130,000 range. Definitely a lot more beans that went into the ground this year."

Lange expects to see a few less dry bean acres next year.

"We might be in that 180,000 range, a little less than what we were seeing this year, maybe even down to maybe that 160,000 range. Time will tell. Probably the biggest reasons for that is we do have competing crops. We do have crops like peas that did really well this year. We have soybeans, yields were also much better this year. We got more moisture. A lot will depend upon a grower's rotation."

He says one of the challenges the dry bean industry has is volunteer soybeans, which can cause shipment rejections at the bean plant. Soybeans are considered a food allergen in the dry bean markets.