Millets Production in India
About Millet:
- Tiny-seeded grasses including sorghum, pearl millet, ragi, small millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, and Kodo millet are referred to as “dry cereals” or “Nutri-cereals.”
- Additionally, they are drought-resistant and more resilient crops.
- Millets require less water, fertiliser, and pesticides than other plants, thus they may flourish in poor soil.
- They are the ideal choice for “climate-smart cereals” because of their ability to resist greater temperatures.
Distribution:
- More than 55% of the world’s millets are produced by the top three producers, which are India, Nigeria, and China.
- India has historically been a major producer of millets.
- However, Africa has recently seen a major growth in millet production.
- After rice, wheat, and maize, pearl millet is the fourth most extensively grown food crop in India.
- Millets are extremely commonplace in India.
Benefits:
- Because millets are gluten-free, low glycemic, high in dietary fibre, and contain antioxidants, they can aid with health issues like obesity, diabetes, and unhealthy lifestyle choices.
- Millets are well-known as nutri-cereals for their high nutrient content, which contains proteins, essential fatty acids, dietary fibre, and B vitamins as well as minerals like calcium, iron, zinc, potassium, and magnesium.
- For children and women in particular, it can offer nutritional stability and safeguard against nutritional deficiencies.
- It will be important for dryland climate change mitigation efforts as well as smallholder and marginal farming.
Issues / Challenges:
- Because so few people still recognise the benefits of millets, there aren’t many businesses in India making millet products with additional value.
- Low pay, a lack of input subsidies and pricing incentives, the public distribution system’s (PDS) subsidised supply of fine cereals, a shift in customer tastes, and diminishing demand are the key causes of the drop.
- A limited supply and higher pricing are also results of decreased demand.
- Millet consumption is limited to rural haats, bazaars, tourist destinations, and festivals due to a lack of adequate market links for agricultural and forestry products.
Governmental Efforts to Encourage the Production of Millets:
- Technology is being spread, quality seeds are being made available through millet seed hubs, awareness is being raised, a low support price is being set, and millets are being included in PDS.
- In Karnataka and Telangana, the nutrient-dense smaller millets are currently a part of the mid-day meal programmes at government and government-aided schools.
- Urban cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi are quickly becoming more aware of millet.
- Millets were designated as “Nutri-Cereals” by the Union Agriculture Ministry in April 2018 due to its “strong nutritious content” and “anti-diabetic characteristics.”
- The UN General Assembly approved a resolution presented by India designating 2023 as the “International Year of Millets” and 2018 as the “National Year of Millets.”
- The National Food Security Mission (NFSM), which was launched in October 2007, includes the millet mission in India.
- The Millet Mission of the Centre will place a high priority on enhancing farm-gate processing, offering farmers more control through collectives, and aggregating the output while putting value addition front and centre.
How to Continue:
- It’s crucial to create a decentralised processing capacity model so that producers may make money both locally and in emerging areas.
- Millets have social advantages in addition to environmental and societal ones, thus it’s critical to encourage their production by giving farmers financial assistance.
- Governments may be able to spend less on health and nutrition by promoting millets.
- A timely solution to relieve farmers from the agony in the area is to implement targeted programmes with appropriate training and capacity-building activities that encourage farmers to diversify their crops by growing millets instead of losing money on them.
