a speech on pulses for sustainable food security prospects and challenges
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The 68th UN General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. The IYP 2016 aims to heighten public awareness of the nutritional benefits of pulses as part of sustainable food production aimed towards food security and nutrition. So far, this has created a unique opportunity to encourage connections throughout the food chain that would better utilize pulse-based proteins, further global production of pulses, better utilize crop rotations and address the challenges in the trade of pulses.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been nominated to facilitate the implementation of the IYP 2016 in collaboration with governments, organizations and all other relevant stakeholders.
"Pulses are good for people, and are good for soils," Eduardo Mansur, the head of FAO's land and water division, said at an event that highlighted the promising future of edible seeds.
The event – “Soils and pulses; symbiosis for life” – was sponsored by Italy's permanent representation to FAO, led by Ambassador Pierfrancesco Sacco, along with Bioversity International and FAO itself, and drew a strong link between the International Year of Pulses and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
Participants highlighted how pulses offer exceptional nutritional inputs to human diets, are economically affordable, use relatively little water compared to other protein sources, and also reduce the need for industrial fertilizers. “They are even gluten-free,” Mansur noted.
Pulses can also fix hefty quantities of nitrogen in the soil, boosting fertility and reducing – by millions of tonnes globally – the need to apply the key nutrient for food crops.
Pulses also have huge potential in wealthy nations, due to environmental and health concerns. Michele Pisante, from Italy's Council for Agriculture Research and Agrarian Economics (CREA), noted experiments showing that rotating legumes with grain crops could save up to 88 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare in Europe, where fertilizer use is high by international standards. “There has been a sharp global reduction in pulse production compared to cereals since 1962, and reversing that would lead to virtuous outcomes including lower carbon costs per unit of glucose,” Pisante noted.