So Celebrated Yet Underutilised: Co-Benefits and Trade-Offs in Legume-Based Food Systems

Legumes can improve the sustainability of arable cropping systems and enhance the quality of farmed animals and human diets. Paradoxically, their production and consumption in Europe are low, whereas their demand for feed is high. Current EU policy agendas push for transformative changes and market and infrastructure restructuring towards plant-based diets, which are replete with paradoxes. Policy objectives frequently contradict each other, with ecological objectives often clashing with economic and international trade objectives.

The presentation will look at the different ideas people have about legumes' role in an agroecological transition by using policy case studies from EU projects like TRUE, Radiant, and LegumES. These projects brought together a lot of different stakeholders and decision-makers to come up with better policy and governance frameworks. It will show how ecosystem service (ES) tradeoffs require targeted and integrated policies, strategies, and practices that seek the agroecological transformation of our food systems. The examples of ES trade-offs (how ecological, economic, and trade policies and objectives clash) will demonstrate the need for radical policy transformation to reduce meat consumption and industrial livestock, increase farm incomes, and reduce our import dependency. We can build more resilient food systems by advocating for policy changes that promote the consumption of home-grown legumes.