In France, whilst pulses only take up 4% of cultivated land surface, nearly half are grown organically. Pulses are really popular here and a wide variety are grown.
Mogettes (dried white beans) from the Vendée in the Western Loire.
In the North and Brittany there are green beans eaten fresh, green beans called flageolets eaten shelled and dried, and the white dried beans known as mogettes and cocos blancs de Paimpol.
In the Centre and North-East it is traditionally green lentils which are grown, but there are also garden peas and split peas.
Cocos blancs (navy beans).
In Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes they are famous for their green Puy lentils and white cocos beans.
In the Midi-Pyrénées and the South-East there is strong production of chickpeas and blond lentils.
Rose lentils from the Berry, to our east.
In the Western Loire they produce chickpeas and flageolets.
Down in Occitanie they are the leaders in production of green lentils, chickpeas and big white dried beans named for the town of Tarbe.
Lingots (dried white beans).
Nouvelle-Aquitaine specialises in dried white beans (mogettes and lingots), peas and broad beans.
Pulses play an essential role in sustainable agriculture. They are a green manure, enriching the soil and vital in crop rotation schemes.
For those of you who have stood before the dried beans in the supermarket and wondered about which was which: lingots are the same as mogettes, but grown outside the Vendée, and both are what in English you would call cannellini beans; cocos are smaller, and in English are navy beans.
Further reading: My blog post on mogettes https://daysontheclaise.blogspot.com/2022/10/mogettes-de-vendee.html
1 comment:
And, allotment growers/home-veg gardeners grow an awful lot more varieties.... and there is a thing on allotments known as "bean pushers"... mainly from people who've holidayed in France, Portugal or Spain, and come back with boxes of seed that would last the average UK gardener some five years.... we have succumbed on numerous occasions and in jars on the larder shelf there are 16 different varieties for eating... Black-eye Peas, Lilac Cranberry, Borlotti, Cherokee Trail of Tears [look up the story behind those, Susan], Lazy Housewife, Mayflower, Black Kidney, Yin-Yang.... the list is endless.... open a Baumaux catalogue... there're twelve pages!!
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