International Year of Pulses

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (16:44): I move:

That this house—

(a) notes that 2016 is the International Year of Pulses;

(b) acknowledges the important contribution of farmers and primary producers to the South Australian economy and society in general; and

(c) recognises the ongoing reliance on our producers for food security and to grow the state's exports to meet national and international demand.

The reason I put this motion forward today is to acknowledge the important contribution of farmers and primary producers in South Australia—the very people we rely on for our food security.

By way of background, the International Year of Pulses 2016 aims to heighten public awareness of the nutritional benefits of pulses as part of sustainable food production aimed towards food security and nutrition, not to mention protein. The year will create a unique opportunity to encourage connections throughout the food chain that would better utilise pulse-based proteins, further global production of pulses, better utilised crop rotations, and address the challenges in the trade of pulses. So, Deputy Speaker, let's have a little bit of an understanding: what is a pulse?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I was hoping you would say that.

Mr WHETSTONE: Really?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I want to know your favourite pulse.

An honourable member interjecting:

Mr WHETSTONE: Yes, I have a pulse—some would say not—but pulses are also called grain legumes. It is the name given to the edible dried seeds of leguminous plants. Legumes are plants which produce a double-seamed pod containing a single row of seeds. They are quite different from cereals: grain is the seed of a grass plant. In Australia, pulses make up around 12 crops, which include beans, peas, chickpeas—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Garbanzo beans.

Mr WHETSTONE: —and lentils.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Garbanzos.

Mr WHETSTONE: Yes. Pulse crops are one of the most sustainable crops a farmer can grow, with many varieties needing much less water and energy input than grain crops with a comparable nutritional yield. Late last year, it was reported that pulses in many parts of South Australia had been planted to a maximum capacity driven by the global supply shortfall of the lentil. The total area planted to pulses in the state is up 20 per cent on last year, with over 100,000 hectares of lentils sown throughout the state during the 2015 season.

The total area sown to fava beans was up 30 per cent on last year, with chickpeas and vetch plantings also on the rise. It was reported that nearly half the extra area of lentils grown on Eyre Peninsula—what a great place to visit over at Flinders, and even at Edillilie on Eyre Peninsula—is at maximum capacity for the crop. Lentil prices have doubled over the last three to four years as the drought in India shrinks the global supply. Canada, a major global producer of lentils, is struggling to keep up with demand for high quality produce.

To give you an idea, in August last year the price of pulses was around $990 per tonne, whereas in October 2012 lentils were sold for as little as $415 per tonne. Growers also capitalised on an above-average season last year across the Mid North and the west of South Australia with lentil plantings increasing by 5 per cent on 2014. Australian pulse growers are set to reap the windfall harvest this year as well. Pulses may not be big on the Australian diet, with nutritionists estimating that one in 20 of us eat enough of them—so it is time to get on with eating pulses—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I eat chickpeas all the time.

Mr WHETSTONE: Yes—but for countries such as India, these ancient grains are a traditional staple. With a predominantly vegetarian population, India accounts for more than 70  per cent of Australia's chickpea exports, particularly red lentils.

A National Australia Bank report estimated domestic production of lentils would surge this season by around 70 per cent, field peas by about 50 per cent, and chickpeas by about one third. It is being reported that some growers have sourced potentially lucrative forward contracts—very, very smart growers are our farmers. Phin Ziebell, an agribusiness specialist in the National Australia Bank, stated:

Prices have exceeded the $1,200 a tonne for chickpeas and lentils, which is a massive run up in prices when you're talking that you're lucky to get two to three hundred for wheat. A huge opportunity for improved grower returns.

In Australia, per capita, we eat around half the global average of seven kilograms of pulses per year, so you are eating above the average, Deputy Speaker. According to the 2015-16 PIRSA Crop and Pasture Report, pulse yields were severely affected by the hot, dry conditions and were well below average. In 2016-17, the areas with pulse crops are likely to remain average but varied across regions.

In the northern Mallee, it was also noted in the 2015-16 year that it was expected that there would be an increase in the use of chickpeas and other pulse crops in that region, particularly with good early rains. More farmers are becoming confident in growing these crops due to the success of other farmers and pulse trials in the area. We all know how important a good pulse trial is. We know that Australia has climatic diversity to enable us to supply a broad range of these pulse products, but Australian growers, marketers, researchers and industry leaders are demonstrating that they have the drive, the ingenuity and the skills to meet the challenges facing the industry.

The pulse industry's growth is increasingly becoming a key to the future sustainability of the whole Australian grain industry as the strategic importance of pulses within the cereal cropping system in Australia continues to grow. Research has shown that farm systems achieve sustainable benefit from the increased yield and protein content in cereals and oilseed crops that are planted following pulse crops.

Australian pulse production has grown dramatically. In 1990, total production amounted to only 1.3 million tonnes of pulses. By the turn of the century, pulses represented 2.245 million hectares throughout the country, producing around 2.5 million tonnes of grain with a commodity value of over $675 million and an additional farm system benefit of around $300 million. The potential for the pulse crop in Australia, assuming all constraints are overcome, is to increase its current size to 4.2 million tonnes with a commodity value of about $1.504 billion and a farm system benefit of about $538 million, giving a total of over $2 billion.

The pulse industry has become more and more important to the national economy. It is becoming more and more important in providing diversity within our grain-growing farming enterprises. Pulses in South Australia and Australia overall are exported across the world. The value of Australian pulse exports increased by around $300 million in 2015 driven by the rampant international demand. The price of pulses has seen farmers across Australia allocating more land to lentils, chickpeas and beans with the total planting area up by 20 per cent on 2014.

Despite the export value of pulses such as lentils doubling since 2011, domestic consumption of grains is in reverse. According to the Grains and Legumes Nutrition Council, average serves of core grain foods have dropped by almost one-third while legume and pulse consumption remains a minor part of Australian diets. Only 4.5 per cent of people regularly include legumes such as lentils, chickpeas or beans as part of their diet. A national survey on nutrition and physical activity conducted by the Grains and Legumes Nutrition Council tells us that pulses are important.

It has been a very good season generally for our dryland farmers with South Australia heading towards an eighth consecutive above-average crop with a 2016-17 estimate of 8.9 million tonnes worth an estimated $1.8 billion to the farm gate. We know about 85 per cent of South Australia's grain is exported around the world to locations including Indonesia, China, Vietnam, India and Egypt, and the grains industry contributed about $4.6 billion to gross food revenue in 2014. It is an absolute pleasure to introduce the International Year of Pulses motion to the house.

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (16:54): On 20 December 2013, the United Nations General Assembly voted unanimously to declare 2016 as International Year of Pulses, providing an opportunity to showcase pulses, such as chickpeas, dry beans, lentils and peas, and to celebrate their role in feeding the world. The South Australian government supports the International Year of Pulses.

Pulses are an important food, eaten in place of meat as a protein source in diets in many parts of the world. In this year of the pulse, it is hoped that more Australians will recognise the health benefits of including more pulses in their diets. I know that many in our South Australian Indian community value pulses as part of their daily diet and their culinary skills deliver some very tasty, nutritional dishes. Mr Simon Bryant, who is one of the state governments premium food and wine ambassadors, is also the Australian ambassador of International Year of Pulses.

In recent decades, our farmers have recognised the value of pulses in their farming systems. Pulse crops are a profitable component to sustainable crop production systems. Their benefits include fixing nitrogen, providing a disease break for cereals and enabling controlling of grass weeds. In 2014-15, South Australia produced nearly half a million tonnes of pulses, with a farmgate value of $343 million, which contributed $263 million to our record level of South Australian food and wine exports of $5.2 billion.

Lentils are now the largest pulse crop grown in South Australia at around 150,000 tonnes, with a farmgate value of $139 million and exports valued at $152 million. South Australia is now the largest lentil growing state in Australia, producing more than half of Australia's lentils. About three-quarters of South Australian lentils are grown on the Yorke Peninsula. The International Year of Pulses recognises the importance of pulses as a nutritious food and their importance to our farming systems. It is interesting that the International Year of Pulses in Australia has seen quite a bit of activity. There was a photo and video competition to showcase Australian pulse grower stories, with the prize being a drone valued at $2000.

There was an Australian Pulse Conference. In January, there were pulse feasts. There has been a pulse social media campaign. Then there is the Australian Signature Pulse Dish Recipe Competition. The winner of that competition produced a dish, with the ingredients being quinoa, black lentil and roasted barley salad with chickpeas, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and pomegranate in an apple cider vinegar. More recipes that can be made with South Australian pulses can be found on the Pulse Australia International Year of Pulses website, www.pulseaus.com.au.

Mr Whetstone: You need to write a cookbook.

Ms WORTLEY: They are producing a cookbook, too, I believe. It has not yet been produced but, according to the website—

Mr Whetstone: Get in early—write one first.

Ms WORTLEY: I thank the member for Chaffey for alerting this house to the International Year of Pulses and acknowledge the importance of the pulse to this state.

Sitting extended beyond 17:00 on motion of Hon. L.W.K. Bignell.

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (16:58): I rise today to make a contribution to the debate and support the member for Chaffey in his motion, which reads:

That this house—

(a) notes that 2016 is the International Year of Pulses;

(b) acknowledges the important contribution of farmers and primary producers to the South Australian economy and society in general; and

(c) recognises the ongoing reliance on our producers for food security and to grow the state's exports to meet national and international demand.

What an excellent motion, and I can inform the house that for 30 years as an active farmer I was also an active grower of pulses.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Which ones? Name them.

Mr TRELOAR: I am coming to that. You will just have to bear with me for the next 10 minutes.

Ms Digance: You're too eager.

Mr TRELOAR: That's right.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I want to know everything about your pulses.

Mr TRELOAR: I was active for 30 years and, by default, I am still a grower of pulses on Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.

Mr Whetstone: At Edillilie.

Mr TRELOAR: At Edillilie, thank you, member for Chaffey. The term 'pulse' is used by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and reserved for crops harvested solely for their dry seeds. In other words, they are legume crops, but not all legume crops are pulses. Pulses particularly have the pod that is harvested. This excludes green beans and green peas, which are considered vegetable crops. Also excluded are seeds that are mainly grown for oil extraction, such as soybeans and peanuts, and seeds that are used exclusively for sowing forage, as in clovers and lucerne. However, in common usage these distinctions are not always clearly made, and many of the right varieties used for dried pulses are also used for green vegetables, with their beans in pods while quite young.

In relation to the Australian pulse industry, pulses are a relative newcomer to Australian cropping systems. They have become very important in the last 40 or 50 years, but in the whole scheme of things it has only been in the last generation or so. Commercial production began in Kingaroy, Queensland, with the production of navy beans to help feed the US troops nutritious and familiar food while they were based in Queensland during World War II. It is better than Spam, I suppose.

According to Bean Growers Australia, the first navy bean trials took place in the 1940s. Prior to this time, many pulse crops were simply used as green manure, so they were turned into the soil to add benefit to the soil, but they were also used as fodder crops because of the beneficial effect these crops have on the soil and their value as livestock feed. Since then, the industry has grown significantly, and pulses are being increasingly recognised for their role in sustainable and profitable production systems.

While pulses are grown in all three major cropping regions in Australia, specific crops are better adapted to some regions. The first fully domesticated Australian sweet lupin was developed in the late 1960s in Western Australia. Chick peas were first grown commercially near Goondiwindi, Queensland, in the early 1970s, and mung beans were also grown in Queensland in the 1970s. Commercial production of the fava bean began in South Australia in the early 1980s, and the lentil industry began in Victoria in the early 1990s. We have already heard today that now South Australia is the largest grower of lentils in the country.

Nationally, pulses average just under 10 per cent of the total area planted to crop; however, in favourable production areas they can occupy as much as 25 per cent of the total crop area. When grown in rotation with cereals and oilseeds, pulses provide good returns, improve soil condition, provide a break from important cereal diseases and reduce costs through their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen for their own use, contributing additional nutrients to the follow-up crop. That is a really good summary of the real benefits of legumes.

Essentially they can extract nitrogen from the atmosphere, store it in the plant and, via their root system on which is contained legume nodules, nitrogen which it has extracted from the atmosphere is deposited in the soil for an improvement in fertility and used by later crops. It is an extraordinary plant. We also have the pod and the seed that are harvested, and sometimes used for human consumption in Australia. I have to say that most of the use still is for stockfeed, particularly in high-density stocking situations.

In 1990, total production amounted to only 1.3 million tonnes of pulses in Australia. The highest level of production to date occurred in 2005-06, and I suspect that that may be surpassed this year because certainly around Australia the season is looking very favourable, apart from those areas that have become too wet. In 2005-06, Australian growers produced over 2.5 million tonnes of pulse grains; in 2015, 1.8 million hectares of pulse crops produced 2.2 million tonnes of grain, worth $1.2 billion worth of exports.

The potential for pulse crops in Australia, assuming all constraints are overcome, is to increase its current size to 4.2 million tonnes, with a commodity value of $1½ billion and a farm system benefit of $538 million, and it is that farm system benefit that farmers really look to use. In their own right, they are sometimes not profitable, but when you factor in the benefit of an entire crop rotation, which might also include cereal crops like wheat, barley or oats, and canola is often in the rotation these days, and if you do the gross margins over the entire rotation, including the pulse crop and the benefits of the nitrogen it adds, the opportunity to grass free and provide a break from the cereals, the benefits certainly are there.

Legumes are very soil specific. Deputy Speaker, you were wondering about my experience with grain legumes. What we have discovered in my time is that grain legumes are very soil specific, and by that I mean that the lupins we grow very much prefer an acidic soil—often a lighter acidic soil commonly found in the Western Australian wheat belt, but also found in South Australia in the Upper South-East and areas of Eyre Peninsula. For the most part, most of my time was spent growing lupins. In more recent times, peas and lentils have been introduced into the softer Mallee loams, which are often alkaline with a bit of free lime in them, and that seems to be suited to the production of both peas and lentils.

Fava beans are an important crop through the Mid North, some of Yorke Peninsula, some of the Lower South-East and the bottom part of Eyre Peninsula. This is because they prefer a higher rainfall and those heavier clay soils—often alkaline, but not necessarily. Sometimes in paddocks you will have two or three different soil types, and farmers, out of necessity, will often have two varieties of legume crops within one paddock just to match the soil types because they are quite specific and demand those soil types.

Pulses have a real benefit. They are high in protein and fibre and low in fat so they certainly provide a very healthy additive to the general diet of Australians. Pulses are also high in levels of minerals (for example, zinc, iron, phosphate and folate) and many of the B vitamins are found in good store in pulses. The benefits are great, not just to the cropping system but also to the consumer, and also as a value-added product into feedlot situations.

One of my great hopes is that one day, in my part of the world on Eyre Peninsula, we can actually link the land and the sea together. I have this idea that maybe one day we can sustain some of our sea-based aquaculture industries by providing protein that we source from annual crops. We are better placed to do it in South Australia, and particularly on Eyre Peninsula, where we have the ability to grow pulse crops—particularly lupins, beans, lentils and peas, which are high in protein and low in fat—and supplement the aquaculture industry, much of which is constrained by the availability of a food chain.

I know there has been a lot of work done on that over recent years with limited success but I remain hopeful because I think that is the ultimate value-adding opportunity for us. In closing, I would like to congratulate the member for Chaffey for bringing this excellent motion to the house. It is important that we recognise the importance of pulses in our farming systems and the importance of agriculture to the state and national economy.

Interestingly, way back in 2002 when I travelled as a Nuffield Scholar through Europe and North America, I was intrigued to find that in the UK, for example, and on the Canadian Prairies, in totally different environments to those we are used to in South Australia and to those I had been farming for all those years, the crop types were the same. In South Australia, we were growing wheat, barley, canola and pulses. On the Canadian Prairies, they were growing wheat, barley, canola and pulses.

In the UK, I visited a farm in Essex. Their rainfall was 19 inches, and it was the driest farm in the UK. It would be a well-watered farm in South Australia if the rainfall was 19 inches. There he grew wheat, barley, oilseed grape (which is what we know as canola) and fava beans. The crops adapt and the cropping systems that have evolved over the last few decades have proved successful right around the world. Through the efforts of our farmers worldwide, we are now able to easily feed a growing world population.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (17:09): I would like to thank the member for Torrens and of course the member for Flinders for their contributions on the Year of Pulses. What I did not mention in my contribution was that I used to grow pulses. I used to grow pulses in my vineyard, but for a very different reason: not to eat but for soil conditioning and also putting nitrogen back into the soil. It was also to bring the vineyard up to a higher health level. They do have all sorts of benefits.

More importantly, we pay homage to the Year of Pulses. We also recognise the great efforts of our farming communities. They are growing pulses in a much more modern way at the moment. We have new R&D, and we have different methods of putting them into the ground and of harvesting them. The member for Colton just reminded me not to forget to mention the bees for pollination. That is critically important. As I think the member for Flinders has said, there are new varieties now, self-pollinating varieties that are the way of the world.

Again, we want to acknowledge the farmers who put their businesses and their finances on the line every year when they plant and pray for the gods to help them. These farmers allow politicians like me, like everyone in this place, to stand up and talk about the contribution of our farming community to the economy, their contribution to growing clean, green food. We need to remember that pulses are the way of the future because the upcoming middle class, particularly in Asia, now has a much higher demand for protein, which pulses give them. Without further ado, the Year of Pulses is 2016, and I was delighted to bring this motion to the house.

Motion carried.