16 The: Colorado Experiment Station 
is growing one kind of bean. This is due to the fact that the mar¬ 
keting costs are lower under such conditions. 
With the exception of one season, Colorado pintos have netted 
the growers around 4 to A l / 2 cents for the past eight or ten years. 
In 1916, prices much higher than this prevailed. But 1916 prices 
were as abnormally high as 1912 prices were abnormally low. At 4c 
d pound to the grower, pintos constitute a reliable cash crop which 
will return good acre net profits to the grower. 
The red Mexicans, the spotted Indian beans and teparies do 
not have a standard market in this section. They are grown ex¬ 
tensively in the Southwest. In fact, the pink bean in southern 
California, Arizona and New Mexico is quite generally grown and 
is perhaps the most common bean on the market, but for those sec¬ 
tions to which Colorado normally ships, namely,, the South and 
East, pintos and navies are the types known. Navy beans may be 
successfully grown under Colorado conditions, but they require 
much more hand work and care. Consequently, they are much 
more expensive to produce. While they bring higher prices on 
the market, the spread between navies and pintos is usually not 
over one cent. This spread will be more than obliterated by the 
increased cost of preparing navies for market. Besides, there will 
be a very much lower rejection in grading and cleaning from pin¬ 
tos than from navies, so that a greater proportion of the crop will 
actually reach the market. 
Market grades have been established for the pinto beans. 
These grades have been adopted by the bean buyers’ associations. 
It is quite probable that the Bureau of Markets may standardize 
grades for this crop. When such is done, it will be much easier 
for growers to prepare a standard product for the market. A stand¬ 
ard product can be marketed to a better advantage than an un¬ 
standardized product, because very much less inspection is re¬ 
quired to determine the quality of the product offered, where beans 
are so standardized and graded as to permit them to be sold on 
grade and sample without the necessity of sampling each individ¬ 
ual bag. 
Communities could do much in helping out their market prob¬ 
lem by growing uniform quality and following market demands as 
to package and cleaning. 
COST OF PRODUCING BEANS 
It is impossible to give exact figures which will really repre¬ 
sent the cost of producing beans, as so many factors enter into the 
cost of production on different farms. On dry land it was found 
that beans could be raised with as little labor as corn. The aver- 
