Black beans are hot crop in Michigan

SEBEWAING, Mich. - Long before a Cuban family in Miami can cook a pot of black-bean soup or a Guatemalan family in Los Angeles can enjoy their frijoles parados, Dick Gremel stares at a frozen Michigan field. He waits.

When spring comes and the wind from Lake Huron no longer bites cold and crisp, Gremel takes to his tractor. Across hundreds of acres, he plants seeds. With that action, countless tropical meals are born - all thanks to a farmer who hadn't even seen a black bean until recently.

"Last year, the demand for black beans was so high that, from now on, we'll grow them every year - no matter what," said Gremel, 54, a third-generation farmer. "You have to produce what people want."

Michigan is the nation's leading grower of black beans, and farmers in the state's fertile "thumb" have their fates linked more than ever to the culinary tastes of Cubans, Central Americans and others who prefer the coal-colored legume.

The change is one of many spawned in U.S. agriculture by the nation's growing Hispanic population and the popularity of their dishes, be they Caribbean moros y cristianos (black beans and white rice) or simply salsa picante from Texas.

Life in this region - settled a century ago by German and Polish farmers - has changed in many subtle ways.

"We've got a restaurant near us that serves a black-bean-something pizza," said Bob Green of the Michigan Bean Commission, based in the farming community of St. Johns. "And how many places have black-bean soup? It's really grown. Is it a yuppie thing? Is it a Mexican thing? Is it a Cuban thing? Yes, it's all of the above."

The old stereotypes about Hispanics and beans are giving way to a new image of the bean: hip, healthy and cosmopolitan.

The growing influence of Latin cuisines can be seen not only in the spread of traditional dishes such as black-bean soup and Salvadoran pupusas, but also in uniquely American hybrids such as sun-dried tomato wraps. A Southwestern hybrid of a Mexican favorite, salsa years ago displaced ketchup as the nation's most popular condiment.

Once upon a time, the navy beans in "pork and beans" were the Michigan farmer's bread and butter. But last year, the state's farmers grew 135,000 acres of black beans, more than navy beans or any other variety. It was the first time that had happened in the state's century of bean-growing. Domestic consumption of black beans has increased tenfold since the mid-1980s. Americans now eat more than 100 million pounds of black beans each year.

A similar explosion in pinto beans - "Taco Bell has really helped a lot," one farmer says - has been a boon to North Dakota, the nation's leading pinto producer. In the Red River Valley, straddling the North Dakota-Minnesota border into Manitoba, Canada, pintos have joined wheat and sunflowers as a big-money crop.

To supply the burgeoning tortilla industry in California and Texas, a small but increasing number of farmers in Nebraska are growing white "food" corn, a trickier crop to raise than the standard "No. 2 yellow" used to feed livestock.

The Hispanic food boom also has brought a sharp increase in the production of chilies and tomatillos in California, said Victor Valle, a professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and author of "Recipe of Memory," a book about the history of Mexican-American cuisine.

"Mexican food and Latin food is becoming ubiquitous, but in two different ways," he said. There are mass-market "crossover" foods such as the tortilla, he said, but also a growth in a market catering to Hispanic immigrants.

Perhaps the most dramatic example, he said, can be seen in the spice racks of chain supermarkets in Hispanic neighborhoods. Some contain as many as 120 spices, including once-obscure herbs such as epazote, whose pungent aroma is similar to cilantro.

To help meet the demand for such products, Joe Perez, vice president of purchasing for New Jersey-based Goya Foods, one of the nation's largest producers of Hispanic foods, scours the United States in search of ingredients. Hardly anything is imported.

The rice in Goya's boxes of arroz espaÄnol comes from Arkansas, as does the hominy in Goya's canned pozole. The bell peppers in Goya products such as sofrito (an onion, pepper and spice base to many Latin dishes) are grown across the Sun Belt, from California to Florida. Goya's black beans come from upstate New York and, of course, Michigan.

"We don't buy from abroad because abroad is not consistent in quality," Perez said.

Mexicans grow up eating 30 to 40 pounds of beans per year. By contrast, Americans, on average, eat 7.5 pounds of beans per year. The figure has increased about 25 percent in the past decade, reflecting both a demographic shift and the nation's broadening palate.

"Before, we had (black beans) going mainly to New York to the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans and then to Texas and Arizona for the Mexican population," said Green of the Michigan Bean Commission. "Now it's all over the United States."