Gonzalo de la Cierva of Industrias Racionero/
An in-depth look at the Spanish pulses market

Based in Madrid, Industrias Racionero is a family company. Both a distributor and owner of the popular Miau brand, their foods have been a mainstay of Spanish supermarket shelves for over half a century. 

How did you get started in the world of pulses?

I'm part of the third generation of this company - my grandparents set it up in the 1960s. I've had pulses in my house my entire life. I remember when I was younger my grandfather would mash up different kinds of chickpeas, making all kinds of unusual dishes to go alongside the usual Cocido Madrileño. From 12/13 years old I came down to the warehouses to work, taking orders and helping package up the pulses to send them away. I was enthusiastic to learn from a young age - I knew all the different types. 

I've always been outgoing and left home at 19 to work and study, a year in Dublin and five years in Paris. I learnt English and French. Then I felt like I needed a change and returned to Spain to study in order to start work in the family business. Now I've been working here for 10 years. You could say that pulses have been passed down in our family, generation to generation, but as my parents’ involvement was more towards the financial management, in truth it passed from my grandfather straight down to me. 

What have been some of the biggest changes you’ve faced in the pulse trade over the years and how has your company had to adapt?

I would say one of the biggest changes in the commercial market of pulses in Spain has been the private label or store brand as these currently make up over 70% of Spanish pulse sales. Then there is the increased concentration of the distribution market; before there was a lot more space for sales from smaller, regional chains, which all disappeared with the arrival of multinationals. Distribution became more and more concentrated in fewer companies and consumers created a habit of buying store-brand pulses.

Also we’ve had to adjust our margins. These days, not many people would say “Right, I’m going to start selling chickpeas,” but my grandfather was a rice distributor originally and moved into pulses because he saw bigger margins and more business. With the introduction of private labels, those margins have shrunk. 

Another huge change was in 2013 with the bankruptcy of the largest company in the Spanish pulse industry: Alimentos Naturales. Its business was distributed amongst all of us in the industry, with the largest companies taking the biggest chunks.

Could you give us an overview of the Spanish pulse trade right now?

We're coming out of a long downturn of the consumption of dried pulses. The figures tell us that since the International Year of Pulses (2016) the drop in consumption slowed and even began a positive upward trend. So what happened? Well, in 2018 the downturn began to slow and then in 2019 consumption started to grow again. More dried pulses were eaten in 2020 but we can't really take 2020 into account because of the disruption caused by the pandemic. When we are able to compare with 2021, we'll have a better idea of what the real trends are. Long term, there is a clear trend towards cooked pulses rather than dried. It remains to be seen whether the rise in the consumption of dried pulses, and pulses in general, will be consolidated over the coming years. 

Would you say that this uptick in consumption has more to do with the conditions of the pandemic or the growing interest in healthy diets?

I think they were both factors. There’s been an uptick in the consumption of pulses, clearly, both dried and cooked, but the conditions of the pandemic were key. People went to the supermarkets during the panic and shortages and bought things that did not perish easily. People bought pulses as if they were rice - 2 or 3 kg to fill the cupboards. They also had more time to cook the traditional dishes with pulses that require time to rehydrate and then cook. So, as I say, I think it’s very early to evaluate the gains of 2020 and, for me, the year has been something of a mirage when it comes to pulse consumption.

How are Industrias Racionero working to try to maintain this growth in consumption

For one thing, I am a part of the Asociación de Legumbristas de España, where we have set in motion lots of initiatives to communicate with people through a variety of events working towards promoting pulse consumption. From the perspective of the company, we want to look towards the future. We're a company with a young workforce - most of the people running companies in the pulse industry in Spain are quite a bit older than I am. We are going to implement an accelerated modernization, focusing on the quality of our product by making sure that our processes in production are cutting edge and our final product is ecological. 

We also want to diversify our product range - if people are eating fewer dried pulses, there are other products that are thriving, such as ‘superfoods’ like quinoa, and whatever else may come along in the future. We want to be versatile and an ambassador for Spanish distribution.

That being said, we don’t only want to be an ambassador in Spain for Spain; I want us to enter into the global market. We want to bring pulses to people like you in London, in Germany and France where people are starting to eat pulses but often what you find on the supermarket shelves there has been packaged by people who don’t eat pulses and aren’t specialised in them. As a result, the quality available to those countries is bad. We want to ensure that the high quality that we provide for Spain, we also provide for the rest of Europe.

Which are some of the most popular Spanish dishes with pulses?

Mostly the more traditional dishes. In my region, for example, we have El Cocido Madrileño which is very famous and each region has their own version. My friend runs a chain of restaurants in Madrid that only serve Cocido with chickpeas. All of these traditional dishes tend to be stews and broths, generally made with pork. There are lots of others - lentils, white beans, Pinto beans with rice. Every region has its preferences; chickpeas in Madrid and Castilla y Leon are smaller, whilst in Andalucia people like to eat thicker ones with a creamier texture. There’s a lower level of production of these in Spain, so they’re often imported from Mexico.

Spain depends heavily on imports to cover its domestic demand for pulses. Do you think this could change?

For that to change the farmers would have to become very interested in the production of pulses. Whilst it's true that there is a growing interest in the Spanish domestic product and it is often thought that the quality of the domestic product is better, in reality that’s not always the case. There has long been a demonisation of the exports from other countries into Spain - a sense that what they (the foreign importers) are doing is ruining domestic agriculture, rather than covering its deficits. It is an attempt to demonise foreign importers and beautify the Spanish producer.

As a result, everyone in the industry is bringing out ranges with ‘Spanish national product’ stamped on the side. Why? Well, news stories about the need to eat more Spanish products make a lot of noise. But in the end, when we look at the numbers, people continue to look primarily at the price and quality before any considerations about its origin. I don't predict a significant move to greater pulse production here in the coming years, mainly because I don't see the same kind of professionalisation that I see from our importers in Canada and the US. Spain doesn't have the guarantee of quality or security of harvest that we see over there.  

In other products, like rice and olives, Spanish production is completely professionalised - we export some 70% of the world’s olives and olive oil. But in pulses we’re still lagging behind. If we had developed the production of pulses in the same way that we have done with rice and olives then perhaps we’d be able to compete with other countries, but for now, I don't see anything in production that suggests Spain will move towards self-sufficiency.

What does the landscape for the average Spanish producer look like?

I couldn’t tell you too much because I work mostly with imports, but there are farmers and cooperatives. I sometimes buy through cooperatives, which have a certain number of farmers and every farmer has their hectares, their production and their yield. In my area right now, I have a project where I’m sending chickpeas from harvests around Madrid to be sold in Madrid. I’m trying to incentivise local farmers to harvest pulses and bring the people of Madrid pulses from their own region. These farmers have very low yields of 500 kg per hectare compared to farmers in Andalucía who can get up to 1000/1500 kg per hectare for 7mm chickpeas. Some farmers work directly with us, the processors, others are part of these cooperatives. 

That said, I do like to work with smaller farmers or with representatives who know the smaller farms well and go to see the harvest and the ground that it’s grown on. We are very, very picky with quality, so we spend a lot of time analysing the samples they show us. We can check through three or four samples when we buy - we are very demanding in both appearance and function of the product.

And you believe that the quality of pulses is better outside of Spain?

Right now it’s more stable - more homogenous. In Spain, sometimes you can find a product that blows you away with how great it is but then 100 km down the road the quality is nowhere near as good, and we see this happening again and again as seed is reused instead of certified seed being brought in. This degrades the quality of the crops.

I think we have good quality Pardina lentils in the Leon area and of Pedrosillano chickpeas too, but in my opinion, and I’d say in the opinion of a lot of my colleagues, the quality found in Canada, Mexico, and the United States is superior to what is grown domestically in Spain.

How much of your company’s product is of Spanish origin?

Around 15/20% - It depends on the year. We export to foreign markets more than we used to. My wife is Belgian and I go there often, so we started exporting to the market in Belgium. As I mentioned, there is a concentration of multinationals in the market in Spain, which is just as true of distributors as it is of producers. There are fewer distributors and less possibility to sell to the biggest domestic buyers. This has led me to concentrate our efforts on markets outside of Spain and our exports have risen from 0.5% to 20%.

As a result, my quota of domestic product goes down because wholesalers in France, Belgium or Germany aren’t as interested in ordering specifically Spanish products like Castilian lentils, Pardina lentils or Pedrosillano chickpeas.

I see on the Miau website that you offer some very creative recipes, such as Chocolate Hummus ice cream - have you tried it?

So, we’ve got chocolate hummus ice cream, and just chocolate hummus. I’ve tried the chocolate hummus and it’s really good. Very special. If I had to pick one of my favourites to recommend to you, I’d say try the red bean brownie – you’ll love it. People can’t believe that it’s made almost entirely with beans, it’s really delicious. The recipes are an initiative to reach people who have just started eating pulses, or to reach young people in Spain who don’t yet know how to cook with them and show them new ways of doing things. We have over a hundred recipes on the site.

So you see a lot of changes in the future for pulses in gastronomy?

Oh yes, I see changes. The best example would be what we just mentioned: hummus. It’s managed to become a widespread food in the United States that is easy to buy, ready to eat, healthy and tasty. In the end I think pulses are becoming more interesting to people. 

There will always be the traditional dishes that get passed down from parents to their children, but young people have a lot to worry about these days so it’s possible that they’re becoming less interested in trying to cook those traditional dishes. People will still go out to restaurants and eat dishes like cocido. That will remain popular. But also new recipes are being created outside of the restaurant world - pulse-based snacks, pulse flours, meat substitutes. This creativity is growing both in restaurants and supermarkets and we’re seeing more pulse products that are easy to eat and very popular.