Millets, a grain that has nutritional value, offers economic security to human beings and represents fodder security for animals, can provide solutions to the challenge of meeting food security globally.

Even in diversified agro climatic situations, millets can be grown economically in all seasons. It can be grown using the available organic fertilisers, with little or no requirement for chemical fertilisers.

Minimal care is required for the growth of millets. The total production cost is also relatively low when compared to other crops. As millets are grown in eco-friendly organics conditions, it fetches better prices, especially as the demand for organically grown grain is increasing. Awareness about the grain and its many benefits can spur marketing efforts and benefit self-help groups and commodity interest groups in the rural areas.

Millets also supports the biodiversity of crops, which is the need of the day to achieve food security. Earlier, the practice of mixed, inter and relay cropping of oilseeds and pulse crops such as red gram, horse gram, cowpea and niger was common practice. More recently, farmers have been attracted to commercial crops such as maize and cotton in place of millet. In order to ensure sustainable food security among rural families, farmers should be persuaded to follow diversified cropping systems that include millet to satisfy their family requirement of oilseeds, pulses and cereals.

Millets offer rural families multiple forms of security in terms of food nutrition, fuel, fodder for animals and to some extent as a fuel source for them. As millets can sustain higher heat regimes, drought and excess moisture, it is also projected as a suitable crop for climate change. It is said that millets are rich in nutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, and mineral compared to rice or wheat. Awareness about its nutritional value should also be spread; currently, the majority of farm families grow millets for fodder but not for their own consumption.

Solution to food security

Millet grain and products can provide a solution for the challenge of food security as well as go some way in alleviating malnutrition given that it is rich in dietary fibre, phytonutrients and anti-oxidants that have therapeutic value and are especially useful in the management of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and cancer.

Millets also lends itself for further processing by way of malting, popping and fermentation. Its chemical composition and the properties of its flour make it suitable for developing several value-added fried snacks, fermented breakfast food, bakery products and sports and diabetic foods.

The promotion of products made of millets with proper packing and marketing strategies has the potential to strengthen social and economic security even for entrepreneurs. Its promotion in Government hospitals, in the mid-day meal programme and Government functions would improve consumption besides encourage the development of new food formulations that incorporate millets.

Due to the lower price of millets and the processing problems involved, the area and consumption of millets has dropped in recent years. But millets requires a re-classification in consumption preference.

With the objective of enhancing the area under millets and to tackle the problems of post-harvest technologies and value addition, the ‘International Millet Project' is being implemented in villages in Haveri district (Karnataka) through the Rural Home Science College UAS, Dharwad; my family is one of the beneficiaries of this project.

(The writer is a progressive farmer from Jekinakatti village in Haveri district.)

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