Can Fava Beans or Chickpeas Compete With Yellow Peas?

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

One of the biggest food trends consumers are gravitating towards right now is the push for protein-dense foods. But that doesn’t always come in the form of animal products. Nicole Atchison, CEO of PURIS Holdings believes pulse crops can be the next frontier for protein and says they’ve already seen success with yellow peas.

Atchison… “ When you look at the pulses, it really comes down to what is that cost per protein, like per acre, and really optimizing that. So why is pea the leader? It's got a good balance of price and protein at the production level. You know, soy is the best. It's got high protein, high yield, and so your kind of cost per gram of protein is low. Fava is interesting. Um, it's got that high protein content. It's just the agronomics and the production of it is still very small. And so figuring that out, I think is, is on the minds of a lot of people. Uh, we have commercialized a fava protein and there's definitely some use cases for it, but you know, we would need to see the agronomics of that get a little bit more, more stable before that would become something that would have a chance of usurping pea. I mean, pea has just has so many more acres grown chickpea, of course is interesting, but with the volatility and pricing, that's difficult when you're in a processing industry to really leverage against, but it's got some unique flavor profiles. The fat content can pose some challenges in the work that we do, but I think those three are probably top of the list.”

Atchinson sees big potential for pulse proteins to provide value to the consumer beverage and medical nutrition space.