Not much market for them last time I was working in agriculture but that's 10 years ago now, and things change.
Is it not more a case of rather than farming the crop, this is about farming the subsidy?
CAP rules say that you have to grow a rotation of crops if you want to be paid, and in our climate, unless you live down the road from birdseye[1], there's not many good nitrogen fixing crops that you can actually get money for. So by growing field bean as animal feed, you can sell it as feed, and get the CAP money for the land? Historically field bean was grown in a lot greater quantities, but that was in the days before it was cheaper to burn down a rainforest, plant soy beans, and then ship those half way round the planet.
For those asking about broad bean and field bean, yes, they are the same species - Vicia faba. Which brings for an interesting quirk of plant naming, species, and genetics. Brassica oleracea is a single species. And yet, we all know it by different names. Brussel sprouts, Kale, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Kohlrabi. They are all a single species. And yet, if I was to put one of each on your plate you'd struggle to see any family resemblance if you aren't a botanist. There's a lot of discussion of when a species becomes a separate species, and Taxonomists are never quite 100% sure, which is why the latin for some plants can change over time. As recently as 2017 Rosemary moved into the Sage family of plants... Tho it is it's own species Salvia rosmarinus, but there is quite some diversity in the cultivars...
It's not consistent tho. While all those brassica are the same species, Malus Domestica (Domesticated Apple), is considered it's own species, despite the similarities to the crop wild relative Malus sieversii. Trying to make sense of when a species becomes a species, and when it is just a cultivar of another species breaks my brain, so I long since stopped trying to understand it.
I can recommend, for those curious, the book
"Tamed" by Alice Roberts. It's a really interesting read on how we have ended up with the domesticated species we have today.
This post is not so much aimed at fboab, but at the others in the thread, not trying to be patronising.
J
[1]Live close enough to the birdseye factory, and then it can be profitable to grow garden peas (Pisum sativum), but as it's not something we really eat fresh, your farm needs to be a certain distance from the flash freezing facility, aka birdseye.