The Pulse Economy in the Mid-1990s: A Review of Global and Regional Developments

Abstract

The world pulse economy seems to have stagnated during the first half of the 1990s after going through a contraction during the 1970s caused by the Green Revolution, and an expansion during the 1980s fuelled by changes in the European Community’s (EC) Common Agricultural Policies (CAP) which favored production of pulses for feed. In 1996 world production stood at 57 million MT on 70.5 million ha with an average yield of 809 kg/ha. However, recent vast cutbacks by the Commonwealth of Independent States (former USSR) and reductions in EC feed production following the 1992 CAP reforms in 1993 have been offset by a sustained upward trend in Africa and a remarkable expansion in South Asia. Developing countries produce 71% of the world’s pulses. India remains the largest pulse producer with 27% of world production.

Trade in pulses has increased to 14% of world production. This encompasses all pulses and regions, suggesting that trade barriers are being reduced. Imports are still concentrated in Europe, while the most important exporters are Canada, France, China, USA, and Myanmar. The latter has emerged as the largest supplier to South Asia, which it shares with inter-seasonal exports from Australia. Two-thirds of all pulses is used for food, mostly in developing countries, while about one quarter is used for feed, mostly in Europe, CIS, and Oceania (Australia). Since 1980–82, per capita food consumption of pulses declined by 6% in developing countries where relative prices of pulses have gone up while consumption of animal protein is increasing. But developed countries increased their food pulse consumption by 2.3%, if from a low base level.

Price data for pulses remain sketchy. In India, the largest consumer, prices have increased relative to other foods, pushing pulse protein out of the average diet. Declining amounts of pulse protein in developing country diets do not necessarily indicate protein deficiencies, but to a paucity of technological progress in production relative to advances in production of animal protein such as milk and poultry, which have brought down the relative prices of these foods. The same observation, coupled with a relatively strong negative price elasticity of demand for pulses, suggests that there is a significant unmet demand for pulses in developing countries which will not be satisfied at prevailing (high) prices.

Yield variability remains a challenge to a constant, abundant supply at low and stable prices. As most of the food pulses are produced and consumed in developing countries, the limitations to higher and more stable yields need to be addressed, and multi-objective frameworks of farm families need to be taken into account when developing improved cultivars and production methods.

The future of the pulse economy depends on social, dietary, economic, environmental, and infrastructural factors some of which are predictable in the process of economic growth while others — such as government interventions and scientific breakthroughs or competing crops or protein sources — are highly unpredictable and could rapidly change the supply or demand situation.