World Pulses Day is celebrated more than ever in the name of resilience and sustainability. The FAO welcomes today's event by underlining how pulses are "improving life" globally "thanks to their low water requirement", which makes them resistant to drought, therefore to "climate-related disasters".

"Puleses contribute in several ways to the transformation of our agri-food systems and can help us address multiple global crises," FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said in a statement. They also help "increase the resilience of agricultural systems" and "improve soil biodiversity", Qu recalls.

In a world that must "face significant food and nutrition security challenges, such as transboundary pests and diseases, conflicts and the effects of climate change", reads the FAO note, pulses can play an "important role", being an " convenient and nutritious food", susceptible to "long conservation".

Pulses create "economic opportunities for small farmers as they typically offer higher profit margins than grains"; they also help "soil fertility thanks to their ability to fix nitrogen from the air and optimize the use of synthetic fertilizers, combating the effects of climatic shocks, such as drought or heavy rains".

"When cereals are grown after pulses in agricultural cropping systems, they can produce 1.5 tonnes more per hectare than those in monoculture systems. Furthermore, they can help mitigate climate change by increasing capacity of soil to store carbon and restoring poor and degraded soils".

The Fao suggests the consumption of pulses not only for their "high protein content - two to three times the amount found in cereals - or for the calories and essential micronutrients they provide", but also for their "low fat and high in fiber." The international organization therefore deems it "fundamental" to include pulses in agri-food systems, in order to "achieve the sustainable development goals".

In conclusion, given the concurrence of World Millet Day with the International Year of Millet, FAO underlines the many similarities between this cereal and pulses: both "contribute to food security and diversified, nutritious and healthy diets, and have adapted to adverse climatic conditions, being able to grow on poor and marginal land. The combination of millet and pulses - concludes the note - through intercropping or crop rotation can encourage sustainability and increase production and agro-biodiversity".