Recycling and Legume Cultivation

Low yields have been the most obvious disadvantage of pulses. When good traditional yields of European staple grains were around 1 t/ha, those of peas and beans were barely half that rate during the last decades of the nineteenth century the best European wheat yields were between 1.5 and 2 t/ha, but peas and beans yielded less than 1 t/ha. Similar gaps were evident in China, where even the national mean of rice yields was around 2.5 t/ha after 1900, while soybean harvests averaged about 900 kg/ha and were less than 700 kg/ha in northern provinces.  

Typical yields of many traditional legume varieties had remained so low that there was no incentive to expand their cultivation in areas of inadequate or marginal food supply experiencing higher population growth. This discrepancy still matters even a poor cereal crop in the arid Sahelian zone of Africa will yield 1-1.5 t/ha, while traditional legumes may bring less than 500 kg/ha.  

---