Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

English translation below

Buenas tardes amigos del Foro:

Considero que una de las determinantes del consumo de legumbres, es la cultura  alimentaria que cada país tenga con respecto al consumo de ellas, digo esto porque En El Salvador ocurre, que los frijoles rojos de "seda" son parte fundamental de la dieta diaria. Se consumen tanto en el desayuno como en la cena y en áreas rurales es lo que se consume en los tres tiempos. También tiene que ver las formas de preparación y esto va de la mano con el sabor y gusto de las personas.

Para el caso nuestro, los frijoles constituye un alimento esencial  de la dieta diaria, nutricionalmente hablando la fuente te de proteina vegetal, dadas las condiciones económicas  que no permiten acceso a las carnes o pescado.

Existen iniciativas que pueden popularizar su consumo, como la transformación en otras opciones,  por ejemplo el Centro Nacional de Tecnologia Agropecuaria ha elaborado snacks a base de las distintas variedades de frijoles que existen en el país. Esa alternativa podria aumentar el consumo de legumbres en aquellos paises donde no sea parte de la cultura alimentaria.

Atentamente,

Dear Forum members,

I believe that the food culture of each country is one of the drivers of pulses consumption. In El Salvador, red “silk” beans are an essential element of the daily diet. They are eaten at breakfast and dinner, and also at lunch time in rural areas. The consumption of pulses is also influenced by the preparation methods and this is related to the recipe flavours and the individual tastes.

In our country, beans are a staple food. They are a source of vegetable protein, especially important in nutritional terms, as the economic conditions restrict the access to meat and fish.

Several initiatives, like the transformation into other culinary options, can make the consumption of pulses popular. For example, the Agricultural Technology National Centre has produced snacks based on the different varieties of beans in the country. This alternative could increase the consumption of pulses in those countries where they are not part of the food culture.

Kind regards,

It is clear a lot of work has been done around pulses. However, I consider most of it stays within the same community. In my case, I was able to participate in the international lupine conference last year in Milan, where all the work related to this field was exposed. Contributions and research has been done, but all the new contributions were not shared with the general public.

I consider pulses should be used in specific target groups. For example, some innovations should be looked within athletes. Most of the products athletes consume are not natural and in most cases the end product consumed is not natural based. They are people in need of food sources like pulses, but the lack of education or products reduces the chance for pulses to become their first option in diets.

In a very specific case, lupines (considered as "the food of the poor" just like most pulses), have a very interesting story case in Ecuador. For years this legume was consumed in rural areas, but people within cities would never consider this as an option of food source. Thanks to governmental efforts to promote the nutritional benefits and due to product innovation, the country has reached the level were local production cannot fulfil the countries demand. How did they manage to do this? A big campaign around how nutritious they are, mainly as a snack for kids; doctors started recommending them to women and athletes for its protein and calcium content; and product innovation were chochos (lupines) are presented on a ready-to-eat version in all supermarkets.

I consider pulses need to modernize. The global trend has changed and most people will not take their time to cook them in a traditional way. Finally, global communication with social media will help a lot with this task. Social media together with gastronomical innovation can help pulses become 'the next quinoa'.

Good nutrition is not evenly adequate in the world because malnutrition is increasing at the expense of overweight and obesity and although its other component undernutrition is receding it is a quanti and qualitatively reality still too important in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC). The absolute figures and trends are a matter of concern at individual, national and international level.

Another relevant aspect is the specific prevalence of undernutrition in children under five years, a period of special health relevance according to the WHO Global Health Observatory in which infections are a real threat with a higher mortality rate especially in LMIC. The good news is that this  pediatric health problem is receding all over the world: In 1960 there were 300 million that in 2015 had gone down to 113 million (-33%), but the problem is still important especially in South Asia with 28.7 million and Sub-Saharan Africa (> 50 countries) with 51.3 million (1) These worrying figures will continue because the world population by 2050 will be of 9.1 billion, whereas the developed countries  will increase by 6%, South Asia will do by 48% and Sub-Saharan Africa by 130%. Consequently malnutrition as the present double burden that is the coexistence of underweight and overweight will go on according to the United Nations Population Division (2).

Essential amino acids (not synthesized by humans) are not completely present in plants or crops that are important, if not the only food available for people living in certain wide areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa or South-Central Asia. Basic genetic and genetic engineering technologies initiated in the middle of the past century have evolved at a fast rate allowing the improvement of this lacking problem. This can be the solution at mid or long term but in the meantime mixes of plant foods adapted to local climate arid conditions can be a feasible solution.

Chickpea seeds (3) or flours (4, 5) are a reasonable food resource but their low content in the essential amino acid tryptophan (Table) is a nutritional risk especially for weaned infants and underfives (6). On the other hand sorghum flour a cereal with similar nutritional capacities, has also the very low content of another essential amino acid (lysine) with well stablished consequences in neurodevelopment and growth (7.8). The mixture of both flours (~20/80 %) will provide a complete protein, the fact of small losses (9) of essential amino acids as consequence of food processing (even by microwaves) is an added advantage. Because of the pragmatic idea of this Forum digest the possibility of having both flours or preferably crops, both being resilient to dry conditions, in these vast rural areas of LMIC could help to improve nutrition in general and especially in this crucial age which affects the rest of life.          

REFERENCES

1. De Onis ; Dewey KG, Borghi E, Onyango AW, Blössner M, Daelmans B. The World Health Organization’s global target for reducing childhood stunting by 2025: rationale and proposed actions. Maternal & Child Nutrition 2013; 9(Suppl 2): 6-26.
2. UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs. World Population Prospect: The2015 Revision www.un.org/eng/development/desa/population
3. World healthiest food. www. whfoods.com
4. Angulo-Bejarano PI, Verdugo-Montoya NM, Cuevas-Rodriguez EO, Milan-Carrillo J, Mora-Escobedo R, Lopez-Valenzuela JA. Tempeh flour from chickpea (Cicer arietinum) Nutritional and physicochemical properties. Food Chemistry 2008; 106: 106-12.
5. Arab EAA, Helmy IMF, Barch GF.Nutritional evaluation and functional properties of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L) flour and the improvement of spaghetti produced from its. J Amer Science 2010; 6(10): 1055-72.
6. Malunga LN, Bar-ElDadon S, Zinal E, Berkovich Z, Abbo S, Reifen S. The potential use of chickpeas in development of infant follow-on formula. Nutrition Journal 2014; 13(8): 1-8.
7. Suri DJ, Tano-Debrah K, Ghosh SA. Optimization of the nutrient content and protein quality of cereal-legume blends for use as complementary foods in Ghana. Food Nutr Bull 2014; 35(2): 372-81.
8. Moya M. Lysine genetically enriched cereals for improving nutrition in children under 5 yearsin low- and middle-income countries, J Nutr Health Food Engineer 2016 (in press).
9. El-Adawy TA. Nutritional composition and antinutritional factors of chickpeas (Cicer arietinum L.) undergoing different cooking methods and germination. Plant Food 2002; 57: 83-97.  

TABLE.  Essential amino acids and protein content in chickpea flour and different

Cereal products in comparison to the complete protein pattern.

ESSENTIAL

COMPLETE

CHICKPEA

SOYBEAN

SORGHUM

MAIZE

AMINO ACIDS

PROTEIN

FLOUR

FLOUR

GRAIN

WHOLE

mg/g prot

mg/g prot

mg/g prot

mg/g prot

mg/g prot

Trp

7

1.1

14

10,2

9

Thr

27

38

42

31,2

37

Ile

25

47

50

42,1

38

Leu

55

76

85

140,8

133

Lys

51

60

70

20,2

27

Met + Cys

25

29

28

16,6

41

Phe + Tyr

47

91

88

53,3

92

Val

32

56

53

52,2

46

His

18

29

28

20,6

27

Prot g/100g

22

36

10,4

8

Respected FAO FSN Forum Members 

Greetings

Please findout my contribution below.

Regards

Bibhu

CONCEPT OF DIABETES FOOD AND DOCTOR’S FOOD FOR MINIMIZING DISEASE AND MALNUTRITION

                                       By Bibhu Santosh, PhD, OUAT, Bhubaneswar

Pulses and Millets are only the Energy foods for both human and animal.Millets may provide the nutrition to diabetes patients. We should take balance food by taking Pulses, Millets, Cereal crops, vegetable crops, and Horticultural edible crops. If we together consume this food then it may give all supplements to our body and help us from diseases. For Doctor’s Tonic all hygienic and nutritive food likes Fruits, Vegetables, Non-veg items and Raw edible foods. So recycle, reuse and replicate the food by preserving and conserving the food for the future. Prepare the food with proper recipe. For eradicating Hunger and malnutrition Diabetes food is the best Way and Rural food Hub and Urban Food hub.

So this concept may be the best for India and world.             

Regards

Bibhu Santosh,Independent People’s Scientist,India

Roles that can be played by Pulses



Legume crops, which are also called pulses, nourish the land, the people, self-reliance and the economy. They enrich the soil and protect it from erosion and are often intercropped with small grains. Some of them are well-adapted to harsh conditions associated with climate change and variability. Pulses have high nutritional value for consumers and for their livestock and they can be sold at relatively good prices. The productivity of pulses is generally lower than that of maize, especially maize in high potential areas but their nutrition density is superior. In addition, small scale farmers, especially women, control the production and exchange of the seed of most pulses, making them an asset in the struggle for seed and food



Strategies for mainstreaming pulses into production systems and diets for agroecological farmers who (already) include legumes in their farming systems:

1. Mobilise other non-practising farmers to shift towards legume-rich farming systems and let them know the associated range of benefits;
2. Increase the volumes, quality, accessibility and availability of quality legume seed, through getting training seed production and multiplication, working with public gene banks to access seeds not longer available in-situ, developing community seed banks and holding community seed fairs;
3. Form commodity associations that are based on pulses;
4. Run awareness campaigns (in partnership with supportive CSOs) targeting multiple actors, especially consumers, children and youth in schools and colleges to change their attitudes towards consuming traditional food and pulses;
5. Add value to legumes and work with the food and nutrition sector to develop, hold food fairs and promote recipes based on pulses and traditional crops;
6. Lobby government and NGOs to include pulses in their input support programmes;
7. Influence governments to give legumes more prominence and support in its policies and programmes.
8. Put women farmers at the forefront and centre of the struggles for the shift because they grow most of the seed, the pulses, and prepare most of the food consumed;
9. Persuade research and extension services to include agroecological agriculture in the research and training work and work with farmers to better understand and integrate legumes into farming systems under different social-ecological conditions; and
10. Urge technology developers to produce and supply efficient and affordable tools for the production and processing of legumes and small grains that they are often intercropped with.

The reality is that cowpease is considered as originated in West Africa where 70% is from Nigeria and Niger.There are top five producers of pulses in Africa which include Ethiopia, Nigeria, Niger, Tanzania and Kenya but I am not certain if there are policies supporting these legumes. In Zimbabwe there is a program called The Zimbabee Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation which we hope can be a provision to support and promote these pulses to the extent of coming up with a policy. So these are areas which need to be worked on.

Regards

Elizabeth

FAO special ambassador for the IYP for Africa

Dear all,

Thank you very much for the comments shared so far and thank you also to all of those who participated in last week’s webinar.

I would like to take this opportunity to tackle some of the questions that were left unanswered.

On the question posed by Holly Tripp regarding the gender implications along the pulses value chain, I think that this touches on many different dimensions. Women are often responsible for growing legume crops. Sometimes if a pulse becomes a cash crop men become more involved, but generally, pulses are planted and tended by women, and processed and stored by women. Therefore, women are usually most interested in information about how to grow pulses, and how to process them.

Unfortunately, on the questions by Jaime Pizarro and Tim Gill on where farmers could best acquire seeds for growing pulses and on who is doing research on pest-resistance, I have no exact answers. Maybe someone in the audience knows more on this and would like to share it with the rest of us? For the time being I’d like to share with you the link to a very good pest management technology resource for cowpea, http://www.iita.org/tamo-manuel

I look forward to your ideas on how to make pulses more appealing to the consumer and the producers.

Best regards

Sieg 

Lots of work has been done to document the role of pulses, their nutritional benefits, improved varieties, traditional diets and farming practices, innovative cropping systems e.g. the doubled up legume technology Sieglinde Snapp introduced in the webinar on pulses last week. However, the impact sometimes remains limited as information is often scattered, presented in a format or language difficult to understand for non-technical people, or simply because the information does not reach those who could most benefit from it.

FAO’s online platform “TECA” (Technologies and Practices for Small Agricultural Producers) addresses this issue by providing practical information about innovative and traditional practices to small holder famers. The TECA team has a long-standing history in assisting partners with the documentation of these practices in a format and language that facilitates their adoption in the field, and guarantees long-term access to these practices through a maintained central repository. At the same time, it is a way of acknowledging and disseminating traditional practices. Technologies available on TECA have all been tested by farmers and have proven to bring positive results and address the challenges faced by farmers today.

For instance, based on the experiences of small holder farmers in Uganda, specifically Mukono (Central region), Kapchorwa (Eastern region) and Masindi (Western region) and in cooperation with Grameen Foundation, the TECA has documented a farmer practice on using Eucalyptus leaves for bean storage (http://teca.fao.org/read/7639). Eucalyptus leaves can be used to store seeds of maize and beans for a longer term, for instance in case seeds are to be stored for the next planting season, because due to the aroma they are less attacked by storage pests. It is a simple, cost effective and safe method of keeping away common storage pests, e.g. weevils, in order to improve storing activities and thus reduce post-harvest losses.

More technologies and practices related to the use of pulses and legumes in agriculture and nutrition that can help rural households to strengthen their livelihoods can be found on TECA:

• Intercropping: http://teca.fao.org/technology/green-manuring-sugarcane-production-soil-improvement-and-water-efficiency-tamil-nadu
• Crop rotation & water use efficiency: http://teca.fao.org/technology/using-residual-soil-moisture-after-monsoon-rice-crop-mung-bean-production-drought-prone
• Post-harvesting/Labour-saving: http://teca.fao.org/technology/labour-saving-technologies-and-practices-manual-and-motorised-cleaning-grains-and-pulses
• Seed priming: http://teca.fao.org/technology/participatory-varietal-selection-improved-chickpea-yield

We invite all organizations that generate knowledge or work with farmers to contact the TECA team to share and promote proven practices! The more “good farmer’s practices” reach farmers in need of improved practices and knowledge around the globe, the more they will contribute to improving farmer’s livelihoods and positively influence their production, income and health.

Putting pulses into the farming system for household food and nutrition security

In spite of impressive growth of Indian agriculture, ensuring household food and nutrition security is still a challenge due to imbalanced growth in agriculture. Food and nutrition security is said to be achieved when adequate and nutritious food is available and accessible to all individuals at all times to live a healthy and active life.

Though production of pulses has increased in India in recent decades it has not kept pace with the increase in population. Given that Pulses are a major source of protein in Indian diet and are climate resilient crops suited to rainfed farming conditions, increase in pulse production can be a remedy for addressing undernutrition.

Half of the pregnant women in India are anemic while in the case of children under the age of five years, 74 percent are reported to be anemic and 43 percent underweight (World Bank, 2012). Promotion of Pulses (Red gram Green gram and Chickpea) form an important of the core  crop interventions under an ongoing Farming System for Nutrition (FSN) study in Wardha district of Maharashtra, India as part of a research programme on Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA). The focus of the intervention is to bring about change consumption pattern of food items over time in smallholder farm families leading to greater dietary diversity and improved nutrient intake in terms of energy, protein and fat; from my experience, the availability of quality seeds of acceptable pulse varieties is a challenge in the region. Specific varieties are often available only through the state governments research institutes and are not very accessible to small holder farmers. Research and extension department’s efforts should focus on farmer selection of appropriate varieties and their promotion to increase cultivation and consumption.

Also, considering the fact that there is widespread malnutrition in India, especially among children and women, there is need to increase production and availability of pulses by adopting various innovative measures like institutional and policy support, development and wider adoption of High Yielding Varieties (HYV) and low cost technologies, proper extension services for processing and marketing of pulses. In my view, a major innovation that can facilitate movement of pulses from the field to the cooking pot will be introduction of low cost pulse processing machines in villages and greater nutrition awareness on the benefits of consuming pulses. Also including pulses in social protection programmes like the Mid-Day Meal (MDM) and the PDS will help promote their consumption for better nutrition.

Pulses have to contend with several alternatives such as meat, eggs, and other aniimal sources when importance is narrowed down to being sources of protein and amino acid. Of couse this could only be "true" should it not posses alter nutritional attributes. Moreover, experience in West Africa especially Nigeria, my country is different where some are given more preference than others. Only cowpea is is more recognized domestically than others, Soybean, probably for industrial use while consumers have no awareness about others. To enhance consumption, awareness must be created about others as so was the case of soybean by IITA, Nigeria since 1980s. This have to be followed by value-addition and possibly replacing some wih egg albumin in confectionaries and the likes.

In places where not consumed, create awareness through orientation projects, empower farmers with inputs to encourage production and launch campaign. For those already having it diet, research into breeding for high yield, pest and disease resistance are "key" as well as empowering farmers.

In view of comparison with others in respect of cropping systems, there may be differences in opinion. If soil fertility improvement is the focus, pulses are better for nitrogen fixation, errosion management etc. This may not be so when considering monetary returns comparatively with some common vegetables. However, there must be one comparative advantage or the other on both sides.

I recently personally commenced cropping systems that comprise soybean and three common Nigerian vegetables in intercrop with plantain in this regard.

To strenghten the value-chain, rolles of middlemen has to be checkmated to make price more consumer-friendly in some cases as it is in Nigeria where by virtue of high consumption rates of cowpea, price in recent time have doubled within three months (June -Sept.) owing to economic recession and other socio-economic reasons.

I witnessed the national advocacy for soybean when first introduced to Nigeria. People learned to prepare soymilk, soup, Iru (Local season) and the rest. It latter advanced to use in complementary foods etc. but I currently have no idea of any country doing such nowadays even Nigeria. This is not too good for global benefits.

Aliya Bakry, do you have reports where the approaches have been evaluated for effectiveness? It would be excellent to know what works in urban or rural areas.