Across the world, millions of families face hunger driven by conflict, climate shocks, economic instability, and fragile food systems. In these contexts, solutions must be nutritious, affordable, resilient, and locally adaptable. Pulses meet all of these criteria.
Though small in size, pulses have a big role to play in supporting nutrition, food security, and climate resilience around the world, making them a critical food group in the fight against hunger.
What Are Pulses?
Pulses are the dry, edible seeds of plants in the legume family, such as beans, lentils, and chickpeas. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations recognizes 11 types of pulses, including dry beans, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas, cowpeas, pigeon peas, faba beans, and Bambara beans, among others.
Hundreds of pulse varieties are grown globally, forming dietary staples in many low- and middle-income countries.
A farmer in Zambia holds deshelled cowpeas.
Why Pulses Matter for Nutrition
Malnutrition is not only about insufficient calories—it is also about a lack of essential nutrients. Pulses are uniquely positioned to address both. They are rich in complex carbohydrates and provide high levels of plant-based protein, making them an important alternative where animal-source foods are scarce or unaffordable.
Beyond protein, pulses are packed with vital micronutrients including iron, zinc, folate, magnesium, potassium, and calcium, as well as B-vitamins and dietary fiber. These nutrients are essential for child growth, cognitive development, immune function, and maternal health. For children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and people recovering from illness, pulses can play a key role in preventing undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.
Diets that include higher amounts of beans, peas, and lentils have been consistently associated with positive health outcomes and improved intake of key micronutrients. That is why the 2025–30 US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has increased the recommended amount of pulses that should be eaten per week.
The plate on the left is a typical Ethiopian meal that includes a variety of food groups, including pulses like lentils.
Importantly, pulses are one of the few foods that can contribute to both the vegetable and protein components of a healthy diet. This flexibility is particularly valuable in humanitarian settings, where dietary diversity is often limited and food choices are constrained.
Affordable Nutrition in Times of Crisis
In emergency and protracted crisis settings, cost and practicality matter. Pulses are among the lowest-cost sources of protein and essential nutrients, making them accessible to households with limited resources.
Their long shelf life and ease of storage make them well suited for food assistance, emergency distributions, and household reserves during periods of instability.
Because pulses are widely consumed and culturally familiar in many regions affected by food insecurity, they are more likely to be enjoyed and used effectively by communities.
Children in Uganda enjoying a meal of cassava, beans, and leafy greens.
For Action Against Hunger, integrating pulses into nutrition and food security programs supports both immediate needs and longer-term recovery. Pulses can be incorporated into school feeding programs, climate-smart agricultural trainings, and other community-based nutrition interventions, helping to improve diet quality while maintaining affordability and scale.
Strengthening Food Security and Local Food Systems
Food security is not only about access to food today, but also about stable and sustainable food systems over time. Pulses are staple crops for millions of smallholder farmers and play an important role in strengthening local food production and markets.
By supporting pulse cultivation, humanitarian and development programs can help reduce reliance on imported foods and more expensive protein options. Pulses offer farmers a crop that can be consumed at home, sold locally, or stored for future use, increasing both household food security and income stability.
Clare, 72, a farmer in Zambia planting drought-resistant crops in an effort to fight climate change.
Their adaptability to different agroecological zones makes pulses suitable for diverse regions, from drylands to mixed farming systems. This versatility supports local solutions rather than one-size-fits-all approaches to hunger.
Pulses and Climate Resilience
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to global food security. Increasing droughts, erratic rainfall, and soil degradation disproportionately affect communities already facing hunger. Pulses are a climate-smart crop that can help mitigate these challenges.
Pulses naturally fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, enriching soil fertility and reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers, according to FAO. This not only lowers production costs for farmers but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions associated with fertilizer use. Including pulses in crop rotations helps restore degraded soils and improves yields of subsequent crops; cereals grown after pulses yield, on average, significantly more than those grown without them
Many pulse varieties are also relatively drought-tolerant, making them better suited to withstand climate shocks than more water-intensive crops. Compared to other protein sources, pulses have a much lower environmental footprint while remaining highly nutritious and affordable, demonstrating that sustainable diets do not have to compromise nutrition or cost.
Pulses as a Pathway to Resilience
Pulses align closely with Action Against Hunger’s integrated approach to tackling hunger—addressing immediate nutritional needs while building resilience and sustainable food systems. They are a practical food choice for both emergency response and long-term development programs.
In nutrition programs, pulses can help improve dietary diversity and nutrient intake at the household level. In food security and livelihoods programming, supporting pulse production strengthens local markets and incomes for families. Pulses also contribute to more sustainable and productive farming systems, ensuring that food security is strengthened in the long-term.
Ending hunger requires solutions that are practical, evidence-based, and adaptable to complex humanitarian contexts. Pulses meet these criteria. They are nutritious enough to fight malnutrition, affordable enough to reach the most vulnerable, resilient enough to withstand climate shocks, and familiar enough to be embraced by communities worldwide. As we continue to work with communities on locally-led solutions to hunger, pulses are a strong ally — offering a scalable pathway to a healthier, more resilient future.
