A hot lota of dal soup is exactly what the doctor and the ecologist ordered. These seeds, packed with nutrition, deliver big time for small people in small houses, living on smaller incomes. We Indians know them intimately—they are the stuff we’re made of, after all—we eat them whenever and wherever they happen to be. They lift spirits and remove hunger. Eating them satiates the soul and keeps us going longer through the day because they burn slowly, unlike cereals that are like a dumpster fire in comparison, leaving you wanting more and wasted.

They are lentils. If you’re taxonomy-oriented, they are pulses. First things first: Legumes is a very broad family of plants, which includes pulses, beans, peas, oilseeds like groundnut, soybean and sesame, forage crops like alfalfa and clover and some non-crop plants, Scotch broom and Genesteae.

They are a family of plants that tend to have nodules on their roots. These specialised structures are colonised by nitrogen-fixing bacteria. They have the remarkable ability to pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere and convert it into plant-usable forms (ammonia). So, leguminous plants make their own fertiliser. In synthetic form, nitrogenous fertiliser is made by combing nitrogen and hydrogen to form ammonia at very high temperatures and pressure, in the Haber-Bosch process.

From the bigger family of legumes, we have pulses, which are mostly grain legumes. In further classification, a subset of pulses is called lentils. The main thing about them—legumes, pulses, lentils—is that they make their own fertiliser. They leave some of that fertiliser in the soil, thus replenishing it and helping the next crop. This is why farmers co-cultivated or rotated legumes with other crops for thousands of years. A century ago, fertilisers made it possible to delink legume cultivation with other crops, resulting in altered cropping patterns and a hitherto unknown fertiliser “trap” or “addiction”.

Biologically-produced nitrogen leaves goodness in its wake, unlike synthetic fertiliser. That’s because the latter is the source of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 270 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Most of the synthetic fertiliser is wasted as gaseous emission (ammonia or nitrous oxide), washes off into waters, producing dead zones and nitrate pollution in drinking water. So, lentils are where biology, climate and environment work in harmony.

Moreover, pulses like red gram, Bengal gram, green, black grams and lentils can grow in dry conditions, without much irrigation. As the retired principal scientist from the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Dr. Soma Marla, tells Hot Rock, pulses are short-duration crops. Most require 60 to 80 days and they fit as an intermediate short-duration second crop after Kharif and facilitate a third Rabi cultivation.

Red gram used to be tall, nearly 2 metres, bushy and long-duration, 160 to 180 days. Dr. Marla and his team released in 2022 dwarf, short-statured, compact red gram varieties like Pusa Arhar of 120 to 130 days duration. Results showed high grain yield.

“With short duration crop a farmer saves cultivation costs and may use the field  for a second crop in dry land areas,” he says.

Nutrition-wise, they are top notch. From bacteria to humans, proteins are among the largest class of biological molecules. So, we are made of proteins and other things like nucleic acids, carbohydrates among others. But protein is a very substantial part of the natural biological composition of every living organism, especially humans. We all need protein to grow, to build muscle, to be active. But we can’t make all the amino acids used as building blocks for proteins, so we must get them from our diet. This is why lack of protein means stunted growth and weakness.

In India, dietary protein for people comes largely from vegetarian sources, for cultural reasons. The 2020 Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for protein is 0.83g per kg per day for healthy adults, as per the National Institute of Nutrition.

In its ‘What India Eats’ report, NIN analysis shows: an average adult from urban India consumed 1,943 Kcal per day, 289 g carbohydrates, 51.6 g fat and 55.4 g protein. In rural regions, an average adult consumed 2,081 kcal/ per day, 368 g of carbohydrates, 36 g of fat and 69 g of protein.

As per food groups, the total energy (E) intake from cereals contributed 998 Kcal per day, visible fats and pulses 265 Kcal per day, legumes 119Kcal per day respectively in urban areas. In contrast, the total energy intake from cereals was much higher 1,358 Kcal per day, and considerably lower from fats (145 Kcal), pulses and legumes (144 Kcal) in rural areas.

Milk and milk products contributed almost similar values in urban (99 Kcal per day) and rural areas (87 Kcal). The recommendations mention that not more than 45 per cent of energy should be contributed by cereals and millets. But their actual contribution was 51 per cent in urban regions and 65.2 per cent in rural regions. Pulses, legumes, meat, poultry and fish contributed a mere 11 per cent in urban areas and rural areas, against the recommended minimum intake level of 17 per cent.

So, protein deficiency and protein malnutrition is rife in India, says Professor N. Raghuram, School of Biotechnology, Guru Gobind Singh University, New Delhi. He reckons the continuing imbalances of the green revolution—which he calls cereal revolution or starch revolution— and government policies, procurement pricing, fertiliser subsides have combined to make Indians deficient in protein intake. India imports protein-rich lentils (including from the US) and exports water-guzzling, fertiliser-driven crops like rice. In fact, India became become the biggest exporter of rice, with 40 per cent of total rice exports, during the 2022-2023 crop year.

The corrections in our food system should start with increasing the cultivation of legumes, pulses and lentils and traditional leguminous oilseeds like groundnut, sesame, etc, says Raghuram. Indians can take legitimate pride in not being a huge part of the climate and environmental footprint. Industrial farming, large animal meats, synthetic nitrogen driven farming, industrial livestock rearing—they leave huge pollution in their wake.

But we look to be heading in that direction. India is the second biggest exporter of beef. Industrial-scale farming is in poultry and to some extent, aquaculture.

“I would say an indigenously grown chicken is, economically, better than imported dal, but environmentally unsustainable. Because there is a climate footprint in transport, storage, you know, fossil fuel, everything,” Raghuram tells Hot Rock.

India can step ahead by “the government simply bringing in suitable policy incentives, pricing mechanisms, procurement strategies for pulses and oilseed legumes. They can incentivise farmers to produce more directly edible, leguminous crops.”

When you consume lentils, he says, you cut down your nitrogen footprint by more than half. You cut down on nitrous oxide emissions. You save the country from the fertiliser trap into which it has fallen. Your dal could lift the country, not just your spirits. Who knew?