When the United Nations General Assembly declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets, it started conversations around these so-called forgotten foods — high in nutrition and dietary fibre, but with relatively lower carbon and water footprint than wheat and rice. Despite traditional millets being easy to grow without chemical fertilisers and pesticides, farmers are still not enthusiastic about taking up their cultivation. The government appears to have good intentions to increase millet demand for the benefit of farmers as well as consumers. To achieve this, the first step would be to increase the public procurement of millets.
High yielding varieties of wheat and rice were introduced during the Green Revolution of the 1960s, in a bid to alleviate hunger and poverty. Despite a slew of agricultural initiatives and technological advancements aimed at increasing productivity, ensuring food security, income and employment generation, reducing price volatility and attaining regional balance in the crops, the impact was not all rainbows and unicorns. There are also misconceptions, perpetuating the idea that consuming millets is a marker of poverty or a lack of access to more refined food choices.
“Post-Green Revolution, the production of wheat and rice doubled due to initiatives of the government, but the production of other food crops such as indigenous rice varieties and millets declined,” reads the research article, Impact of Green Revolution on Indigenous Crops in India. Millets started diminishing from the agricultural landscape as farmers shifted to wheat and rice. Being commodities listed under the Public Distribution System (PDS), the demand for wheat and rice increased over time, providing farmers an incentive to cultivate them.
Millets were a part of India’s staple diet up until a few years ago. Later, both urban and rural communities strayed away from their traditional diets and turned to wheat and rice. The fact that millets are primarily known for their health benefits should be taken into consideration while developing the hybrids. Including millets in the diet can help combat nutritional deficiencies, especially prevalent issues like iron-deficiency anaemia in pregnant women. Today, the millet market is targeting urban, health conscious people who are willing to pay a higher price for the right nutrition.
We need to optimise the processing of millets from harvesting to procurement and distribution. Developing high yielding hybrid varieties of millets with minimum decline in nutrients is a way to ensure more production. Farmers should get this incentive for taking up millet cultivation. They should be incentivised and paid for the ecosystem services that they are providing to the society through millet agriculture. Millets are good for the environment and soil since they do not require any chemicals to grow. The International Year of Millets campaign certainly has started many conversations. The solution is to optimise the processing of millets from production to consumption.
