8 February 2024
On 1 February, AGT Foods Africa became the full owner of Pannar Seeds’ dry beans seed business.
South Africa’s farmers will have access to all the top-quality dry beans seed they need for their plantings during the 2024/25 summer production season. This is the promise from Brian Lever, the managing director of AGT Foods Africa, which recently acquired Pannar Seeds’ dry beans seed business.
Lever tells African Farming that the acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, is a “natural fit” for AGT, which describes itself as “a value-added pulse, staple food and ingredient processor for export and domestic markets”. Its activities include breeding and marketing the seed of various crops.
AGT has contracted the expertise of Pannar’s veteran dry bean and soybean breeder, Dr Antony Jarvie, who will use his knowledge and skills to improve the dry bean genetics AGT has acquired.
“There are existing markets for dry bean seed both in South Africa and across the rest of the Southern African Development Community countries,” says Lever.
“Our plans for the foreseeable future are to fully learn and understand all the dry beans seed business’s nuances, to increase its breeding budget and to start growing its African export market exponentially while simultaneously seeing how we can grow the local market. The old PAN prefix of the dry bean varieties that we now own will be changed to the AS prefix.”
South Africa’s crop estimates committee reports that for the 2022/23 summer, farmers produced 50 260 tons of dry beans from 36 650 hectares (average 1,37 tons/ha). The current estimate is for 42 300 ha of dry beans planted during the 2023/24 summer.
Lever believes there is scope to “dramatically increase” dry beans production. His research has found that for several years South Africa has imported dry beans to meet local demand. “I think sub-optimal farmgate prices have been a major hurdle to expanded local production,” he says.
AGT’s director of operations and production, David Kretzmann, says challenging weather conditions over the past two summers and ever-increasing production costs have added to the cost-price squeeze for dry bean farmers.
“For example, these farmers have long had to hire lots of temporary labour to hand-harvest dry beans because the pods lie too close to the ground for a mechanical harvester to be used,” he says.
“AGT Foods is working with Antony Jarvie to develop more upright-growing dry bean varieties that will allow for much faster and more economical mechanical harvesting.”
Lever says dry beans are increasingly popular among South Africa’s cash-strapped consumers as a cheaper alternative protein to meat. Furthermore, when canned these beans are ideal as a ready-to-eat ingredient when load-shedding makes cooking with electricity difficult or impossible.
“In our extensive experience within the food industry, we have found that the quality of South Africa’s dry beans is consistently excellent in comparison to those of many other exporting countries. So, there’s also the potential opportunity to expand our dry beans production to supply export markets,” says Lever.
“We have a good relationship with the Dry Bean Producers’ Organisation and are working with it to identify and develop all potential opportunities for South Africa’s dry beans production.”
For now, says Lever, AGT will use its and Pannar’s existing network of clients, such as agricultural co-operatives, to market dry beans seed. As new market opportunities are identified, this distribution network will be expanded.
Lever says the Competition Commission attached two key conditions to its approval for AGT’s acquisition of Pannar’s dry beans seed business.
“One condition is that we must allocate a certain amount of money towards assisting South Africa’s developing farmers. The second is that for the next three years, we must give the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development preferential prices for a specified quantity of dry bean seed that it orders directly from us, for its development projects.”
