Towards A Legume Renaissance: A practical European roadmap for fava beans for food and feed
This report presents a practical European roadmap to strengthen and scale protein crops, using fava beans as a concrete lens to show what is possible across both food and feed. Co-created with farmers (conventional, organic, regenerative), input providers, processors, retailers, food service, researchers and civil society, it maps today’s barriers and sets out coordinated policy and market solutions that work across farming systems. It translates these insights into concrete recommendations for key EU and national policy frameworks, including the CAP, CMO, NRP, ECF, and the Public Procurement Directive. By focusing in depth on fava beans while keeping recommendations transferable to other legumes, the roadmap shows how protein crops can reduce dependence on imported feed and fertilisers, improve soil health and biodiversity, and boost farm profitability and resilience. It quantifies the impact of these measures on farmer incomes, production volumes and strategic autonomy, and illustrates what a “Legume Renaissance” could deliver for European agriculture and diets by 2040.
