Mungs for Profit

In Oklahoma, in the U.S. bonanza belt where anything can happen, hundreds of farmers last week were marketing the last of a freak crop worth $4 million. The crop: mung beans.

Mungs are legumes that came originally from China. For more than 100 years a few U.S. farmers have raised mungs in small quantities for fodder, but had found little market for them as a cash crop. But when imports of mungs from China were blockaded, owners of chop-suey joints from coast to coast and as far west as Honolulu flashed an S O S. The sprouts of U.S. mungs were needed for Times Square's most popular dish.

In Enid, Okla. (pop. 28,081), a smart grain dealer, Dale H. Johnson, bought mung seeds, begged the skeptical farmers in Garfield County near the Oklahoma Panhandle to plant a test crop. Johnson believed that the beans could be seeded, grown and harvested during the three to four months between the end of the winter wheat harvest and the beginning of fall planting for next season's wheat. He was right. The beans grow well when there is sufficient rainfall in late summer.

By 1942 mung planting in Oklahoma was up to 35,000 acres, the yield was 270 lbs. of beans an acre. This year 80,000 acres of mungs were planted, an estimated 16.8 million Ibs. of beans harvested. Most of the harvest was trucked to Johnson's busy grain elevator. In fact, some farmers darkly suspect that Johnson cornered the mung market this year, and is making a killing. He denies it. But he bought all the beans he could get, at from 10 to 18-c- a lb.. last week was shipping them out to Chinese buyers in New York and San Francisco at a new high price of 30-c- a lb. But the farmers had cleaned up, too.

A typical mung grower is Victor Virgil Beard, 31, of Waukomis, who came home after 16 months in the Army. He had been discharged as an essential farmer. Early this summer Beard cut 2,500 bu. of wheat off 100 of his 600 acres of rich flat farmland. As soon as the wheat was in, Beard planted the 100 acres of wheatland to mungs, this fall harvested 17,400 Ibs. of beans. The wheat grossed Beard $3,575, the mungs $3,132--and Beard still has 1,250 Ibs. of beans for seeds.

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