Life Cycle Assessments - A Market Advantage for Canadian Pulse Growers

The data not only supports the environmental claims of pulse-based products, but it also underscores the competitive advantage Canadian pulses have in the global market, thanks to their sustainable production practices and the comprehensive environmental data available for these crops.

LCAs are a strong pitch when you're talking about companies that could invest in Canada. Canada has a good story to tell. Our footprints are very low.

“Our industry started to become more sophisticated, especially in the processing sector,” says Tremorin. “We started to realize that companies are wanting to position their plant-based protein against their competitors’ plant-based proteins. Is there actual useful data for companies and processors wanting to evaluate their own products, or evaluate Canadian pulses as a potential ingredient? Almost no one has this data, so we decided to pursue LCAs.”

Importantly, you don't have to go back to individual farmers. We have a data set that represents Canada, regionally and nationally. Once published, companies can use that data to conduct their own assessments for their own ingredients, conduct comparisons with their crop, with other potential crops - there's all kinds of things you can do with the data once it exists.

When Pulse Canada began conducting LCAs in 2017, the primary focus was comparative. For example, an LCA was commissioned on a bread product containing pulse flour, which added strong sustainability messaging to the industry's market development strategy. In 2019, a decision was made to start pursuing LCAs on individual pulse crops, beginning with peas and lentils.

"We’ve been working closely with the University of British Columbia’s Dr. Nathan Pelletier on developing LCAs for crops," says Tremorin. "Dr. Pelletier is the one of the most prominent LCA experts for agriculture in Canada."

The process starts with Pulse Canada collaborating with its provincial partners to conduct surveys, capturing data and scrubbing out the outliers. Then, the experts at Dr. Pelletier’s lab take over, where they do the modelling for all the indicators and put the report together.

In 2021-2022, Pulse Canada initiated LCAs on three types of dry beans and faba beans, which are big crops for Manitoba, and Alberta, and Ontario. A new chickpea LCA is currently underway.

“These are unique datasets,” says Tremorin. “For peas and lentils, there will be some datasets out there already, but no one has this kind of data for faba and dry beans.”

Opportunities are everywhere. Pulse Canada’s recent LCA on Canadian feed peas sought to demonstrate that pulses can be part of the equation in helping livestock sector lower its emissions. The study shows that reformulating swine feed with Canadian peas can reduce the carbon footprint of pork by up to 18%, a win for both pulse growers and pork producers.

There’s a competitive edge to the LCAs Pulse Canada is developing. If you're sourcing pulse products from Canada, you're going to get a comprehensive and specific dataset that other markets won’t have for their products. The U.S., for example, has been paying attention and is developing a dry bean LCA as well.