CESME, Turkey — The impact of the International Year of Pulses is exceeding industry expectations.
“This has gone beyond my own imagination,” said Hakan Bahceci, former president of the Global Pulse Confederation and the man who led the charge to get the designation from the United Nations.
He said pulses have been forgotten crops for years, but now they are in the global limelight because of a full year of events celebrating the health and environmental benefits of eating pulses.
There have been 141 events in 36 countries, and the year is only half over. The IYOP committee has raised more than $10 million to fund the activities.
Read Also
August rain welcome, but offered limited relief
Increased precipitation in August aids farmers prior to harvest in southern prairies of Canada.
Andrew Jacobs, chair of the United Kingdom’s IYOP promotion group, said the biggest impact has been on social media.
“We are delighted to know we have reached over 300 million impressions for the IYOP campaign since its launch,” he told delegates attending the 2016 Global Pulse Convention in Cesme.
The IYOP organizing committee had set a target of 20 to 40 million impressions.
“In less than half a year, we have exceeded 10-fold our full year expectations,” he said.
The Jan. 6 Pulse Feast event generated seven million tweets that reached 25 million people.
As well, there have been 5.2 million active on-line engagements on social media.
“By engagements, we mean people not just seeing what we’re saying but doing something such as liking, downloading, retweeting, et cetera,” said Jacobs.
Two-thirds of the web traffic on the www.pulses.org website has been directed through social media promotions. There have been 203,516 visits to the site.
“Connecting with consumers has never been this accessible or affordable,” Jacobs said.
sean.pratt@producer.com
