Full of beans! Integrating dried beans into your crop rotation. The Organic Growers Gathering 2024. Friday 27th September 2024 This session explored the potential and challenges of integrating more dried beans into arable and horticultural crop rotations.

Chaired by Dr. Julia Cooper ORC.

The panel of speakers 1. Isabel Mackintosh discussed ORC’s LiveBean project where different individual varieties and mixtures of field beans have been trialled under organic management on a network of farms. Potential to optimise variety choice and mixes and challenges managing weeds will be discussed.

2. Dr. Imelda Uwase from Reading University spoke about the Leguminose project; benefits of intercropping beans into cereal systems and potential for similar approaches on a smaller scale i.e. in horticultural systems

3. Nick Saltmarsh from Hodmedods on markets for dried beans and the potential to extend our thinking on types of dried beans to “rare” beans as per recent Hodmedod campaign.

The session included an open discussion after the speakers shared experiences and challenges of integrating beans into arable and horticultural systems in a UK context.

The ORC Full of Beans session at the Organic Growers Gathering was a fantastic opportunity to talk to a large and enthusiastic audience of growers about the possibilities, opportunities and challenges of growing more pulses in the UK. There's enormous demand for more locally produced beans and other pulses, especially more specialist varieties better suited to horticultural production than arable. Dried beans of Phaseolus species in particular are a potential new high value crop for market gardens that also bring environmental benefits." Nick Saltmarsh, Managing director, Hodmedod Ltd