Taking the pulse of beans
Why don't we eat more peas?
The falling production and consumption of pulses is largely a result of a huge oversupply of raw materials in a high-input linear food system.
A few weeks ago I took part in a seminar in Stockholm about pulses, and in particular pulses for human consumption. My role was to give a global outlook. Below I share some of the data I had compiled for the event and some further reflections.
As you can see from the table, the total agriculture output, in the rather crude measure weight, increased with 259% between 1961* and 2020. Meanwhile the population increased with 151%. As I have stated many times before, any talk about global food shortage and a need to increase production even more is pure nonsense.
We can see that the most dramatic increase is for oilseeds, where soy and palm oil make up most of the volume; together they account for 2/3 of all vegetable oil in the world. It is worth noting that the production of meat and vegetables have increased a lot and vegetables even more than meat. Contrary to common belief, increased consumption of meat and vegetables go hand in hand when food supply and incomes increase. Both are, in most cases, luxury products and indicators of wealth (there are some exceptions to this such as pastoralist that often are poor and consume a lot of meat). You can read more about the dietary transition here.
Two categories of food stand out with a production that has not even kept pace with the increase of population: root crops and pulses. Root crops are potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, yams and alike and pulses are leguminous crops harvested dried**; peas, beans, chickpeas, lentils etc. Two major leguminous crops harvested dried, soy beans and peanuts are, however, classified as oil seeds. In the dietary transition, starchy, energy rich, staples, such as root crops are replaced by sugar, vegetable oil and grain products and pulses are replaced by animal products or seafoods to put it a bit simple. Both within countries and between countries one can observe this trend (as always with food consumption patterns one can find exceptions). Even in India, a country famous for its pulse consumption and a high rate of vegetarians, this trend is apparent. In the table below I have included also peanuts and soy beans eaten as such (Apologies to Americas and Oceania as I left you out).
In the EU, 64% of the pulses are used as feed. Lentils and chickpeas are almost exclusively used for food. They are hardly produced at all in the EU, however. They are imported despite the fact that climatic conditions for producing them are quite good in the southern parts of the Union. Surprisingly, despite its harsh climate, the main exporter of pulses is Canada. There the production takes place on mainly on very big farms.
The EU has supported the production of pulses and “protein crops” (by which they mean soy) for decades with meagre results. The main reason for why the production of pulses doesn’t take off is that it is simply not profitable compared to other major arable crops, such as wheat and corn. The low profitability is caused by low yields and low prices. With the inflated land prices in most parts of the European Union, a low yield per hectare is a drag. The average yield of dry pulses in the EU is 2.5 tons per hectare. If you pay a rent of €250 per hectare the rent corresponds to €0.1 per kg, which is a lot when prices are in the range of €0.3-€0.4 per kg. The land prices and rents in Canada are much lower.
Land prices in the EU
In 2022, the average price of 1 hectare of arable land in the EU was €10,578. The average annual rental price was €233 per hectare. The price of 1 hectare of arable land varied from a low of €3,700 on average in Croatia to €233,230 on average in Malta. In some countries there are strong regional variations in land prices. In the Netherlands, prices ranged from €66,051 in Friesland to €150,644 in Flevoland, the national average being €85,431 per hectare. In Spain, prices ranged from €4,906 in Extremadura to €83,299 in Canarias, the national average being €10,263 per hectare. The cheapest regions were Övre Norrland (€2 041 on average) and Mellersta Norrland (€2 437) in Sweden, reflecting the harsh conditions (in the region where we live south of those, the price is more or less on the EU average, even if the price of our particular land is considerably lower as a result of soil quality and location). Source: EU agricultural land prices and rents: huge contrastsIn the view of some, it is a waste that a large share of the pulses are used as feed. But, there is really no conflict between the use of pulses for feed and for food, on the contrary. The food market pays better, so if there is a demand for food, pulses will be sold to the human market. It is also an advantage for the food market that there is a bigger quantity to choose from as it makes it easier to get the desired quality of the beans. Also from a farmer perspective it is advantageous. Even if you aim for the human food market, you might get quality problems, insect damages etc. which makes it impossible to sell it to the food market. Then you will be happy that you can sell them as feed.
Should we eat more pulses?
Pulses have no unique qualities that make them essential in the diet, i.e. everything you can get from pulses (including the gasses) you can get from combinations of other crops and animal products. Strictly speaking that is the same for all other foods as well; there are no foods that are totally essential and the history of humanity show that we have been able to survive on all sorts of foods. From a consumer perspective I believe the two main aspects speaking in favor of pulses are: 1) they are cheap proteins and 2) they increase the culinary diversity. The first argument is the reason for why poor people and poor countries consume more pulses than the rich ones. From a culinary perspective it is interesting to note that there are many traditional dishes that contain both a pulse and some animal product. In Sweden we have pea soup with pork (ärtsoppa) and brown beans with pork belly (bruna bönor med fläsk) while in other cultures they have chili con carne, daal gosht or feijoada. Research by Inger-Cecilia Mayer Labba and colleagues also shows that most of the iron in pulses is not available to the human body (bioavailable), as a result of their content of phytate. But if you combine pulses with some animal foods the human body can use both the iron in the animal food and the iron in the pulses.
Even if pulses and meat are to some extent alternatives to each other, they are in no way exclusive alternatives but also good platefellows.
We should grow more legum,inouse plants
The main argument for pulses is not from the consumption perspective. Their main feat is that they and other leguminous plants have a symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing Rhizobium bacteria. As some nitrogen will be lost from the farming system regardless how good farmers we are it is important to get “new” nitrogen into the cropping system. This means that they have a given role in a low-input agriculture system. In such a system, the yield penalty of pulses compared to, say, wheat or corn, will be much lower than in a high input system. If you use no nitrogen fertilizer your wheat yield might fall from 7 tons per hectare to just 3 tons while your peas will still give you 2.5 tons. They have also a valuable role in crop rotations with other crops, also here in particular in low-input, organic or regenerative systems. They are also easy to store. Pulses are also quite easy to grow and harvest by small scale growers, famously demonstrated by Henry David Thoreau in his Walden book. Interestingly, he didn’t like them very much and he bartered most of his bean crop for rice.
In some circumstances, the cultivation of pulses is problematic. For instance, where I live, the autumn is mostly too humid for beans and peas to mature and dry, apart from the fact that boars, mice and deer will eat the crop before maturity. Luckily, leguminous plants such as clover and alfa-alfa can bind even more nitrogen into the cropping system and are even superior to pulses in crop rotations as they are perennial plants. They cannot be eaten by humans though, but by ruminants. That will increase the diversity in the agriculture system even more.
* If you wonder why my data, and many other statistics has 1961 as the starting point it is because the FAO database has that as its initial year. Obviously, the data is not perfect but it is the best we have on a global level.
** When beans or peas are harvested fresh such as haricot vert or sugar snaps, they are classified as vegetables.