How are legume crops valued in Europe?

A Legume Value Chain Analysis!

How are legume crops valued in Europe?
Insights from the analysis of several Value Chains case studies in the H2020 LegValue Project.

A paper presented at the European Conference on Crop Diversification
September 18-21 September 2019, Budapest, Hungary

Currently, the EU agro industry is characterized by a self-sufficiency in cereals and a massive import of soybean, as a result of several self-reinforcement mechanisms that lock in this system (Meynard et al. 2013, Magrini et al., 2015), which have relevant consequences in terms of costs and environmental impact.

While scientific knowledge on legumes has been until now concentrated on a small number of species and crop management strategies, H2020 LegValue project aims to provide knowledge on a large range of legume species and cropping systems, together with their expected performances, thus offering great potential for locally-adapted crops for the very wide variety of agricultural conditions in Europe.....................

Authors:
T. Smadja±1, F. Muel2 and M-B. Magrini3
1 Terres Univia, Paris, France
2 Terres Inovia, Paris, France
3 INRA Occitanie, Toulouse, France