Time to make the millet mighty again

When the Gandhinagar-Mumbai Central Vande Bharat Express was inaugurated last month, the train apart from providing new-age connectivity to commuters also introduced a low-calorie millet-rich regional menu to travellers made from Ragi, Oats, Muesli, etc.

The customised menu for Vande Bharat train is following the theme of the International Year of Millets to be celebrated in 2023 the world over.

The initiative has been steered by India in the UN General Assembly adopting a resolution in April 2021 and declaring 2023 as the International Year of Millets.

Millets are one of the oldest foods known to humans and possibly the first among cereal grains to be cultivated for domestic purposes.

They offer food, fodder, fuel, and nutrition security and can be grown in intercropping or under mixed cropping with pulses and oil seeds.

These are small-seeded grasses that are hardy and grow well in dry zones as rain-fed crops, under marginal conditions of soil fertility and moisture. They are also unique due to their short growing season.

Important millet crops grown in India are Sorghum (Great millet), Bajra (Pearl millet), Ragi (Finger millet) and small millets viz., Korra (Foxtail millet), Little millet, Kodo, Proso and Barnyard millet.

Millets are rich sources of nutrients like carbohydrates, protein, dietary fiber, and good-quality fat and have substantially higher amounts of minerals like calcium, potassium, magnesium, iron, and B complex vitamins, making them a preferable choice over cereal grains. 

In India, millets have been utilised from time immemorial, with symbolic significance, as they are sacred to the farmers | Photo Credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP

These were often referred to as coarse cereals but realising the nutrient richness of the grains they are now gazetted as “Nutricereals” by the Government of India.

However, despite these substantial benefits, the millets industry has declined, due to several factors that can be attributed to a lack of demand stimulation, and stagnant cultivation of small millets.

Though India is the largest producer of millets in the world and millets are grown in about 21 States, the highly productive varieties of rice and wheat were widely promoted, which gradually hindered the expansion of millets production.

Restricted cultivation, availability of good quality seeds, the lesser shelf life of millets, lack of technologies and machinery for primary and secondary processing, absence of market linkages, and lack of uniform standards and grades are some of the major problems related to millets.

Consumption of millet as direct food has significantly declined in India due to policies centred around Green Revolution–led food security from the 1960s onwards.

During the journey towards food security, nutritional security was not the primary focus, and the availability of other fine cereals such as rice and wheat at an incentivised price through PDS, Mid-day meal scheme (MDM), and other feeding programs hindered the widespread adoption of millet as a staple food.

Another factor that hindered the progress of millets is the inadequate support to research efforts for improving the millets cultivation and lower profitability and lack of commercialisation leading to millets being less remunerative crops due to lower yields.

Compared to wheat, rice, and maize, millets have lower productivity in the country. This is attributed to their cultivation in marginal lands in rain-fed farming and the non-adoption of improved cultivars.

As per the findings of some studies, the variation in the average yield gap of millet crops ranges between 58 per cent to 183 per cent for crops like rabi sorghum, Kharif sorghum, bajra, and ragi | Photo Credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP

Processing of small millets is a complex process and the lack of processing machinery and diversification of processing technologies dedicated to millets is a big challenge leading to the slow pace of millets promotion.

Then there are challenges related to pest and disease resistance of millet crops.

Though millets have minimal pests and diseases, some pests and diseases often cause significant losses in sorghum (shoot fly, stem borer, grain mold), pearl millet (downy mildew and blast), and finger millet (blast).

No productive cultivars with highly significant resistance to these pests and diseases are available and management options are mostly limited to agronomic and chemical methods.

There exists a void in the availability of product-specific cultivars and seed hubs for the breeding and production of high-yield millet seeds which could otherwise help in establishing demand-driven production of millet.

The health benefits and nutritional features of millet are well known and it is because of these exceptional qualities that millet is also known as a “superfood”.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the immune-boosting quality of millet and its rich nutritional profile prompted people to go for it  | Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K/The Hindu

Amid such challenges, it’s heartening to see that India’s proposal to the Food and Agriculture Organization for declaring 2023 as the ‘International Year of Millets’ has been well accepted and will surely lead to the mainstreaming of Millets.

However, for mainstreaming of Millets there is a need to develop a successful millet value chain ecosystem with end-to-end solutions for creating demand for millet.

A systematic network of forward and backward linkages in millets through the involvement of multi-stakeholders in the millet ecosystem must evolve for sharing the expertise in processing and value addition of millets for the benefit of farmers, FPOs, and Self-help Groups (SHGs).

Development of seed hubs that can deliver quality seed at high production levels is an important intervention required to manage the demand and supply of millet in a better way.

As the world is already facing the challenges of drylands expansion, soil degradation, and groundwater scarcity there is a lesser possibility of crop improvement of major staple cereals production.

For example, in India, according to the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA 2020) report even after utilizing maximum irrigation potential, about half of the total irrigated land will continue to remain unirrigated.

In such a situation promoting alternatives to major cereal crops and millet and their cultivation becomes important as it can solve this problem to a large extent as they can be grown on shallow, low fertile soils with a varied ph. value.

Millets can be an easy replacement for wheat and rice. Rapid instances of climatic changes have resulted in a major loss of arable land used for crop production causing yield losses.

Millets encompass numerous biochemical properties that confer better tolerance to environmental stresses than major cereals.

Millets being naturally drought tolerant stands as the best alternative in semi-arid and arid environments | Photo Credit: MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP

It confers superior adaptation to drought than major cereals and the short life cycle of millets (10–12 weeks) as compared to other major crops (20–24 weeks) also supports them in mitigating the impact of extreme climate situations.

Today when the hidden hunger-led lifestyle diseases are surging irrespective of rural or urban areas, there is a need to strategically promote millet to make it a better choice of food in terms of nutrition and health.

To maximise the consumption of millet it is necessary to target millet’s marketability with palatability based on taste preferences among people.

There is also a need to develop popular food items such as biscuits, noodles, savory snacks or chips, etc. from millet which could help in bringing them to the common man’s plate.

Sanjay Gupta is the MD and CEO of NCML. Views are personal 

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