We must grow and eat more legumes!

Policymakers, more legumes, please!

Growing more beans and peas in Europe is not just for eating yummy, local food such as chilli-beans or hummus made from chickpeas or faba beans. More than this, the crops providing these grains can determine the sustainability and health of humans, farmed animals, the environment, and biodiversity.

Why should the cultivation and consumption of home-grown legumes be promoted?

• Even though there is a high demand for legumes in Europe (mainly for feeding animals), the vast majority are imported, primarily soybeans and animal feed. And it is horrifying to know that they often originate from clear-cut biodiverse regions (e.g. rainforests).
• Legumes are healthy - low in saturated fat, high in nutritional value, high protein, fiber, essential minerals, and other important health promoting substances.
• Their ecological benefits start in the farmland:

1. legumes can fix nitrogen from the air and reduce the need for fertilisers;
2. legume crops improve soil qualities and function;?
3. legume crops can reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
4. they help increase the number of crops in the crop rotation, and can help reduce crop disease incidence and pesticide use.?

Soaking dry pulse grains for 8-12 hours before cooking helps to reduce bloating. (Photo: Lipka Borbála)

What can a policymaker do for home-grown legumes??

Several barriers block the uptake of home-grown legume crops, but some policies enhance the willingness of farmers to produce more legumes, and consumers to purchase them too. Steering away from conventional high synthetic input agriculture to agroecological farming is pushed by? legume cultivation, and pulled by consumer demand. Wide scale acknowledgment of the health and environmental benefits of legumes is a prerequisite of any change.

• What are the barriers at the national and EU level to increase the production and consumption of legumes? Check out here.?
• The production of protein crops has been subsidised financially by the European Commission's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Yet, legume cultivation persists at an extremely low level across the EU. How can CAP or EC ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’ positively impact legume production and consumption across all EU member countries? Read our policy brief to find the answers here.?
• The ability of legume cultivation to significantly reduce synthetic nitrogen fertiliser use is a vital and core element of the transition from conventional high synthetic input agriculture to agroecological farming. However, it is also important to appreciate that legume cultivation faces technical challenges which need to be tackled through applied research. For that reason, we recommend policies that support research and development in this field. Have a look at our relevant policy recommendations here.?

Creamy sandwich creams made from pulses. (Photo: Agri Kulti)

• Do you know that eating 100 g of cooked legumes each day helps to keep you fit? Nutrition, diet, and health policies have a high potential to enable a transition towards home-grown legume-based food and feed systems. Mainstreaming health and nutrition into education and cultural programs would increase? awareness of healthy food choices. We recommend more policy support and investment in value chain development for education of stakeholders, and for the development of new legume-based products - to further enhance biodiversity and local agriculture. See the details here.?

The EU-funded project Transitions paths to sustainable legume-based systems in Europe (TRUE) is a balanced practice-research partnership of 24 institutions. It identified and implemented routes or transition paths across entire legume feed and food value chains to help increase sustainable legume cultivation and consumption across Europe. The model approaches, innovations, tools, methodologies, peer-reviewed scientific publications, and other insights are freely available on the project website, and TRUE | Zenodo.???