India unveils ambitious pulse plan

Canada’s largest pea and lentil customer says it will no longer need to import those crops in the very near future. Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently announced in the 2025-26 budget that the country will be self-sufficient in pulses starting in 2028-29. Deepak Agarwal, managing director of the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd. (NAFED), has a big role to play in the government’s plan. NAFED was established in 1958 to promote co-operative marketing of agricultural products to benefit the farmers of India. He said the government has established “a very, very aspirational and ambitious rule” that has implications for pulse exporters around the world. “This may ruffle some feathers in the global pulses industry,” he told delegates attending the Global Pulse Confederation’s Pulses 25 conference in Singapore. Agarwal said India has met with delegations from exporting countries such as Canada, Australia and Brazil to inform them that ...