LINCOLN- Nebraska’s dry bean growers are hoping to re-establish trade with the European Union now that a Trump-era, retaliatory tariff on agricultural products has been dropped.

A week-long trade mission to Bulgaria just concluded, with the leader of the trip, Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen, expressing confidence that trade with the European nations in dry beans will be re-established.

Nebraska produces about 1 billion servings of dry beans a year, and had shipped $3.2 million worth of beans to the European Union in 2019 before those shipments ended due to a 25% tariff on agricultural commodities.

Lynn Reuter, executive director of the Scottsbluff-based Nebraska Dry Bean Commission, said Tuesday that Bulgaria in particular is a prime consumer of Great White Northern beans produced in southwest Nebraska and the Panhandle.

“You can’t turn down any market the way the world market is now. You have to constantly be looking for new markets,” she said of the trade mission.

Evnen, in a press release, said that importers and processors the Nebraska trade group met in Bulgaria expressed an “immediate readiness” to establish trade for the state’s dry beans.

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