The authors use a first-of-its-kind approach to show that the increased cultivation of legumes would deliver higher nutritional value at lower environmental and resource costs.
The authors use a first-of-its-kind approach to show that the increased cultivation of legumes would deliver higher nutritional value at lower environmental and resource costs. This provides additional evidence for strategies to meet the European Union’s urgent environmental targets.
Growing more legumes, like beans and lentils, is potentially a more sustainable and nutritious approach to European agriculture, shows a new study in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. This study presents some of the first holistic evidence that adding legumes to traditional crop rotations (typically including barley, wheat and rapeseed) offers significant environmental benefits as well as increased nutritional value for humans and livestock.
“This strategy can contribute significantly to the specific European Union Green Deal Farm to Fork objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, chemical pesticide use and synthetic fertilizer use,” says first author Marcela Porto Costa, of Bangor University in the UK.
Read more at: Bangor University
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