The Dry Edible Bean Marketing Year: A Buyer’s Guide to USDA’s Reporting Calendar

The dry edible bean marketing year runs on a reporting system that looks nothing like the one behind corn, soybeans, or rice. There is no monthly balance sheet. There is no exchange floor. There is no futures contract standing behind the price. For merchandisers, elevators, and wholesale buyers, that absence changes how the market has to be read — and knowing which USDA release carries which piece of the picture is the difference between anticipating a price move and reacting to one.

This guide covers the fixed structure: the calendar, the agencies, the reports, and the price discovery mechanism. Because production numbers, acreage, and prices shift every season, this post deliberately avoids pinning them down. What follows should hold true year after year.

⚡ Executive Summary: How the Bean Market Is Actually Reported

Dry beans are not a program crop, and the reporting reflects it. Buyers arriving from corn, soybeans, or rice will find the familiar reports missing — and unfamiliar ones doing the work instead.

• The Calendar: September 1 through August 31, defined by USDA’s Economic Research Service. ERS publishes one national marketing year; state-level marketing seasons appear in NASS’s Crop Values Annual Summary rather than a dedicated ERS table.
• The Missing Reports: Dry beans sit outside the monthly WASDE and outside NASS’s quarterly Grain Stocks — even though dry peas, lentils, and chickpeas are covered in Grain Stocks. There is no monthly balance sheet and no quarterly inventory survey.
• The Stocks Answer: Official carryover does exist, just annually. Beginning and ending stocks live in ERS’s Vegetables and Pulses Yearbook Tables. The real gap is not the absence of stocks data — it is the absence of an in-season read.
• Price Discovery: No exchange-traded futures contract. AMS’s Daily Grower Bids are the only real-time price signal, and the “Basis” column in that report functions as a posted cash bid, not a futures spread.
• Where Risk Enters: With no forward curve to price it in advance, a supply shock in any major foreign origin reaches U.S. cash bids immediately and unhedged.
• The Bottom Line: Learn which agency answers which question — NASS for acres and production, AMS for today’s price, ERS for total supply and demand — then track class-level bids rather than national totals. The dry edible bean marketing year rewards buyers who know where each piece of the picture is published.

📅 What the Dry Edible Bean Marketing Year Is

USDA’s Economic Research Service defines the dry edible bean marketing year as September 1 through August 31 of the following year. So a marketing year labeled “2026/27” covers September 1, 2026 through August 31, 2027.

That start date tracks harvest and delivery rhythm rather than the calendar or fiscal year. It also sits a month behind rice, which begins its marketing year on August 1 — a gap that reflects the later planting and later harvest of dry beans across the northern production belt.

One nuance worth understanding: ERS publishes a single national marketing year for dry beans. It does not publish a state-by-state marketing year table the way it does for rice. State-level marketing seasons for pulse crops do exist, but they appear in NASS’s Crop Values Annual Summary rather than in a dedicated ERS table. If you need state-level timing, that is where to look.

🏛️ The Three Agencies, and What Each One Answers

Most confusion about the dry edible bean marketing year comes from not knowing which agency owns which question. Three USDA bodies publish the data, and they answer three different things.

NASS (National Agricultural Statistics Service) — “How many acres, and how much crop?”
NASS runs the survey program. It tells you what growers intend to plant, what they actually planted, how the crop is progressing, and what it ultimately produced. NASS also publishes the season-average price growers received.

AMS (Agricultural Marketing Service) — “What is the price today?”
AMS runs Market News. It publishes the cash bid reporting that functions as the industry’s real-time price signal, broken out by commercial class and growing region.

ERS (Economic Research Service) — “What does total supply and demand look like?”
ERS assembles the balance sheet. It takes NASS production, Census trade data, and stocks estimates and turns them into supply, availability, and per-capita consumption figures — plus the narrative analysis that explains what moved and why.

Hold those three roles in mind and the reporting calendar organizes itself.

📊 The USDA Reporting Calendar for Dry Edible Beans

Here is the full sequence of releases that touch dry beans, and what each one is good for.

Of everything above, the Weekly Bean, Pea, and Lentil Market Review is the report to watch first. It is the most frequent and most current read on where cash prices are actually moving, and it pairs that pricing with crop condition commentary in a single release.

Two further ERS and AMS resources sit outside this calendar because they publish on no fixed schedule: the Vegetables and Pulses Yearbook Tables, which carry the annual balance sheet, and the Annual Bean Market News Review, a season summary of market conditions and pricing. The Yearbook Tables are the most underused resource available to bean buyers, for reasons the next section explains.

🔍 The Information Gap — and What Actually Fills It

This is the part that trips up buyers coming from grain markets, and it is the single most valuable thing to understand about the dry edible bean marketing year.

Dry beans fall outside the WASDE. The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates carries full balance sheets for wheat, rice, coarse grains, oilseeds, and cotton, with U.S. coverage extended to sugar, meat, poultry, eggs, and milk. Pulses are not in scope. There is no monthly supply-and-demand update for beans.

Dry beans fall outside the Grain Stocks report. NASS’s quarterly Grain Stocks covers wheat, corn, sorghum, oats, barley, soybeans, flaxseed, canola, rapeseed, rye, sunflower, safflower, and mustard seed — and, notably, three pulses: dry edible peas, lentils, and chickpeas. Dry edible beans are absent. There is no quarterly, survey-based inventory number for beans.

But an official stocks figure does exist. This is where a lot of market commentary gets it wrong. ERS builds a full annual balance sheet for dry beans, structured exactly as you would expect:

Total supply = Beginning stocks + Production + Imports
Domestic availability = Total supply − Exports − Ending stocks − Seed use

That balance sheet, including beginning and ending stocks, lives in the Vegetables and Pulses Yearbook Tables. The Vegetables and Pulses Outlook provides the narrative interpretation; the Yearbook Tables carry the underlying annual data. If you need an official carryover figure, that is the source.

So the accurate framing of the gap is narrower than it first appears. Dry beans lack quarterly, survey-based inventory data of the kind corn and soybean traders take for granted. What they have instead is an annual balance sheet, which gives a year-over-year look at carryover but nothing in between. Between annual updates, the only current read on how much crop is still in bins comes from AMS cash market reporting and from talking to dealers.

💵 Price Discovery Without a Futures Market

Dry edible beans have no exchange-traded futures contract. That is the structural fact that shapes everything downstream.

You can see the absence in USDA’s own reporting. AMS’s Daily Grower Bids report is built on a shared grain-report template that includes a “Futures Settlements” section — and on the bean report, that section sits empty. Worth noting: this is a template artifact rather than an official USDA statement, since the same template serves reports for commodities that do have futures. But it is a visible reminder of what is missing.

In place of a futures curve, the market runs on posted cash bids. The Dry Edible Beans Daily Grower Bids report publishes region-specific bids by commercial class — black, Great Northern, pinto, and navy (labeled “Pea”) among them — for the ND/MN and NE-CO/WY/W-NE growing areas, using the internal region labels Min-Dak and Den-Rate. Bids are quoted per hundredweight for US #1 food-grade beans, bagged, delivered to warehouse.

A terminology note that matters. The AMS report includes a column labeled “Basis.” In grain markets, basis means the local cash price minus the futures price — a spread. With no futures contract behind dry beans, there is no spread to calculate. The figure in that column functions as a posted cash bid, not a basis in the conventional sense. Traders moving over from corn or soybeans should not read it as one.

The practical consequence: the dry edible bean marketing year is tracked report-by-report rather than contract-month by contract-month. There is no hedge to roll and no delivery month to watch. The skill is reading grower bids as they publish, because that is the only real-time price signal the market has.

🌎 Why Global Supply Hits Cash Bids Immediately

Here is an underappreciated consequence of having no forward curve.

In a futures-traded commodity, the market prices anticipated risk in advance. News of a foreign crop shortfall moves deferred contracts weeks or months before the physical shortage arrives, and buyers can hedge against it.

Dry beans have no such mechanism. Without a forward curve, a supply shock in a major producing origin — Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, China — cannot be priced in ahead of time. It arrives in U.S. cash bids directly and unhedged. Southern Hemisphere harvest cycles run on a different calendar than the U.S. crop, so foreign supply news lands at various points across the U.S. marketing year rather than clustering at one predictable moment.

For buyers, this means watching international crop conditions is not optional background reading. In a market with no hedge, foreign supply is a direct input to the price you will be quoted.

🫘 Commercial Classes: Why Beans Don’t Trade as One Commodity

Dry beans are not a single commodity the way soybeans are. NASS reports production by commercial class, and AMS prices by commercial class. Price discovery happens at the class level, not the aggregate level.

The major classes include pinto, black, navy (also called pea beans), and the kidney types — light red and dark red. Beyond those, USDA also tracks Great Northern, small red, pink, small white, cranberry, blackeye, and large and baby lima. Chickpeas, though often discussed alongside beans, are reported separately by USDA and are not counted in dry bean totals.

The hierarchy moves. Pinto has historically led U.S. production by volume, with black beans a substantial second. But class shares shift over time as acreage follows price signals and export windows. Classes serving specific destination markets — black beans into Latin America, kidney types into Europe and the Middle East — can expand or contract sharply on demand from a single region.

Production is also concentrated by class as much as by state. A weather event in one growing region does not move every class equally. That is why buyers tracking the dry edible bean marketing year need to follow class-level bids rather than the national production total. The headline number tells you very little about the beans you are actually sourcing.

🗺️ The Four Production Regions

State rankings shift from year to year as acreage, weather, and export demand move around. Regions are more stable, and thinking regionally holds up better over time.

The Red River Valley — eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. Consistently the largest U.S. production area, and the dominant source of pinto beans, with substantial navy and black bean acreage. This is the region behind the Min-Dak bids in AMS reporting.

The Great Lakes — principally Michigan, centered on the state’s Thumb region. A long-established production area with particular strength in navy beans and the kidney classes.

The High Plains — western Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and Wyoming. Largely irrigated production, weighted toward pinto and Great Northern. This is the region behind the Den-Rate bids.

The Pacific Northwest — Idaho and Washington. Smaller by total production but often carrying a larger share of export volume than of production, which makes it more visible in trade data than in acreage tables.

One distinction worth keeping straight: a state’s production rank and its export rank are not the same thing, and they routinely diverge. Reading an export-share figure as a production ranking is a common and avoidable error.

🧩 Putting the Dry Edible Bean Marketing Year Together

The dry edible bean marketing year is not complicated once it is laid out, but it runs differently from nearly every other row crop a trader might already follow.

There is no futures calendar to reconcile against USDA’s survey dates, because there is no futures calendar at all. What exists is a September-to-August cycle built on NASS production surveys, AMS cash market reporting, and an ERS annual balance sheet. Price signals reach buyers through a different channel than they are used to — a tight Crop Production forecast or a sharp move in the Daily Grower Bids does the work that a WASDE surprise or a limit move would do elsewhere.

Know which agency answers which question, know that the stocks picture is annual rather than quarterly, and know that class-level bids carry more information than national totals. That framework holds regardless of what any given crop year brings.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions About the Dry Edible Bean Marketing Year

When does the dry edible bean marketing year start?

The dry edible bean marketing year runs September 1 through August 31, as defined by USDA’s Economic Research Service. ERS publishes a single national marketing year for dry beans rather than a state-by-state table like the one it maintains for rice. State-level marketing seasons for pulse crops appear in NASS’s Crop Values Annual Summary.

Why is there no futures market for dry edible beans?

Dry edible beans do not have an exchange-traded futures contract. Successful futures contracts generally require a large deliverable supply, a highly fungible product, and broad participation from both hedgers and speculators. Dry beans are a fragmented market split across many commercial classes with differing specifications, which works against contract standardization. Price discovery therefore runs on posted cash bids reported by USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service.

Are dry edible beans included in the WASDE report?

No. The WASDE covers wheat, rice, coarse grains, oilseeds, and cotton, plus U.S. sugar, meat, poultry, eggs, and milk. Pulses fall outside its scope, so there is no monthly supply-and-demand balance sheet for dry beans.

Is there a stocks report for dry edible beans?

Not a quarterly one. NASS’s Grain Stocks report covers dry edible peas, lentils, and chickpeas but not dry edible beans. However, USDA ERS publishes an annual balance sheet for dry beans — including beginning and ending stocks — in the Vegetables and Pulses Yearbook Tables. That is the official source for carryover.

How often does USDA report on dry edible beans?

USDA publishes Prospective Plantings in March, weekly Crop Progress reports in season, Acreage in June, monthly Crop Production forecasts in season plus a January Annual Summary, and Crop Values in February. AMS adds a daily grower bids report and a weekly market review. ERS publishes its Vegetables and Pulses Outlook in April, July, and December, and maintains the Yearbook Tables annually.

What are the main commercial classes of dry edible beans?

The major classes include pinto, black, navy (pea bean), and light and dark red kidney. USDA also tracks Great Northern, small red, pink, small white, cranberry, blackeye, and large and baby lima. Chickpeas are reported separately from dry beans.

🌾 Sourcing dry beans? Our team tracks each dry edible bean marketing year release as it lands, across every major commercial class. Contact the F. Garcia sales team to discuss how the reporting calendar affects your black bean, pinto bean, or broader bean sourcing.

📚 Sources and Further Reading

Every structural claim in this guide comes from USDA primary sources. Links below go directly to the publishing agency.

USDA Economic Research Service (ERS)

• Vegetables and Pulses Data — Documentation — Defines the national marketing year for dry beans as September 1–August 31, and directs users to NASS’s Crop Values Annual Summary for state-level marketing years and marketing seasons for pulse crops.
• Vegetables and Pulses Yearbook Tables — The annual balance sheet. Comprehensive time series covering supply, availability, stocks, and season-average prices, with pulse crop coverage beginning in 1980.
• Vegetables and Pulses topic page — Confirms the Outlook publishing cadence of three issues per year, and links the full suite of ERS pulse resources.
• Vegetables and Pulses Outlook (report series) — Situation-and-outlook narrative covering production, acreage, value, prices, trade, per capita use, and beginning stocks.

USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS)

• Grain Stocks — survey documentation — Lists the commodities covered in each quarterly release, including dry edible peas, lentils, and chickpeas. Dry edible beans do not appear.
• Crop Production Annual Summary (ISSN 1057-7823) — Contains the Dry Edible Bean area, yield, and production tables, both statewide and broken out by commercial class.
• Prospective Plantings — Includes the Dry Edible Bean Area Planted table and confirms dry beans among principal crops.
• Grain Stocks (quarterly release) — Shows pulse stocks reporting limited to dry edible peas, lentils, and chickpeas.
• Crop Values Annual Summary — Season-average prices and value of production for dry edible beans; also the location of state-level marketing seasons.

USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS)

• Dry Edible Beans, Peas and Lentils — Market News — Landing page for the daily grower bids report, the weekly market review, and the annual review.
• Dry Edible Beans Daily Grower Bids (AMS_2917) — The daily cash bid report, showing class-level bids for the ND/MN and NE-CO/WY/W-NE regions, the Min-Dak and Den-Rate region labels, the “Basis” column, and the unpopulated Futures Settlements header.
• National Weekly Bean, Pea, and Lentil Market Review (AMS_2914) — Weekly pricing paired with crop condition commentary.
• Report 2917 documentation — Methodology notes for the daily grower bids report, including how basis is calculated on reports where a futures reference exists.

USDA World Agricultural Outlook Board (WAOB)

WASDE — report page and FAQs — Confirms WASDE scope: U.S. and world wheat, rice, coarse grains, oilseeds, and cotton, plus U.S. sugar, meat, poultry, eggs, and milk. Pulses are outside the report’s coverage.