The 5 big pluses of pulses

Pulses are key to our sustainable agriculture approach to establishing food security in the rural communities where we work. Fish, meat and chicken are the traditional sources of protein, but for many households they're prohibitively expensive. Families end up relying on cereals such as maize, wheat and rice which at least provide carbohydrates.

“In our work we see many agencies and seed companies promoting these cereals, which are also processed into a variety of products,” says Meshark.

“Our role is to encourage farmers to grow pulses as alternative food crops," Meshark says. "They’re rich in proteins, fibre, and important vitamins and minerals such as iron, zinc, folate, and magnesium. These are especially vital for growing children, expectant women and the elderly.

“Ensuring that the families we work with have enough safe and nutritious food is Ripple Effect's number one impact objective,” he says: “Everything else we do follows from that.”

Ripple Effect tracks project progress by a household dietary diversity score (HDDS), which measures the percentage of people eating six or more food types a day. In many communities where we start working there are very low HDDS because of the lack of protein, and that directs our project planning, including promoting pulses.

In 2023, 115,000ha of the land managed by farmers Ripple Effect is working with was put into pulse production. The result that year was a harvest of 2.3m tons of pulses, half of which was consumed by the farming families themselves.

Legumes (the crops that produce the edible seeds which are pulses) are vital allies in a climate crisis. Pigeon peas, chickpeas, yellow beans and cowpeas are among the common species grown in the tropics for their climate resilience.

In Kenya, for example, farmers growing maize will now usually intercrop with beans and cowpeas. Beans are faster-maturing than maize and they can expect a crop in as little as three months, before a drought sets in. And cowpeas do well even with inadequate rain.

All of the 46,000 households we are currently working with in Kenya now have at least half of their farmland intercropped with pulses.

Most crops deplete the soil of nutrients during their growth cycle, which is why restoring soil health is such an important part of our work and we train in farmers in making and using compost.

Leguminous plants get 60 percent of their nitrogen from the air and feed it down into the soil through their roots, where it can be shared by adjacent crops. They also have the capacity to mobilise phosphorous and other essential nutrients – minimising the need for adding chemical and mineral fertilisers.

In our holistic farm systems training we promote intercropping other farm crops with leguminous plants that produce pulses for human consumption and crop residues that can be used as animal feed. (This also has the benefit of increasing soil cover and reducing moisture loss and erosion.)

Animal manure can then be incorporated into compost and reintegrated back into the soil: maintaining soil nutrients and biodiversity and improving its structure, and boosting the yields and nutritious quality of crops.

Beans and pulses are eaten all around the world, in everything from east African maharagwe to Egyptian falafel, Lebanese hummus, Indian dal, Chinese black bean sauce, Tex-Mex chilli and British baked beans.

This international popularity supports an incredibly valuable biodiversity of pulses. Meshark can buy in his local Nairobi market “common beans”, green grams, cow peas, pigeon peas and Dolichos lablab, as well as most of the beans and pulses seen in the global north. 

Jennifer’s local supermarket in Bristol sells dried 8 different types of "wet" beans and pulses in cans, jars and cartons - from cannellini to black eye beans, as well as 7 varieties of dried beans and pulses.

"Biodiversity matters because we're not putting all our eggs into one basket," says Meshark. "We have seen the dangers with crops like maize or bananas, when farmers were encouraged to grow just one or two varieties because of their flavour or high yield, but harvests were very vulnerable to adapted pest infestations."

Jennifer believes that many home cooks like herself in wealthy countries have lost touch with how simple and cheap it can be to keep and cook pulses. “I blame the recipe-writers for the fact that I'm carrying so many tins of beans home from the shops!"

In the countries where they’re grown, beans and pulses are commonly dried in the sun and then stored dry, often in sacks hanging above a fireplace to protect them from pests. Pulses for seed may be mixed with natural pest repellents such as pepper or ash.

Ripple Effect does a lot of post-harvest work with farmers, says Meshark. "We share best-practices for cleaning, sorting, drying, winnowing and storage, as well as packaging and processing beans and pulses into added-value products. All this ensures families minimise crop spoilage and gain maximum value from their hard work."