Valuing faba bean and pea for feed

A large proportion of Germany’s protein feed requirement is met using imported soya, especially for pig and poultry feed. Most of the soya is imported from the USA, Argentina and Brazil and is genetically modified. Grain legumes such as faba bean and grain pea, along with rapeseed meal, have the potential to at least partially replace soybean meal for feeding livestock. Since 2015, agri-environmental measures such as ‘Diverse cropping’ have been funded in several German federal states. Among other things, these require that legumes are grown as the main crop on at least 10% of the farm’s cropped area each year. Consequently, there is an increasing supply of locally-produced grain legumes in these regions which can either be sold directly to processing companies or used for local feed production. This raises the question of the economic value of the grain as determined by its nutritional constituents.