Mainstreaming Millets for Food and Nutritional Security

Abstract

The need to provide food security for the burgeoning impoverished populations of India culminated in adoption of new high yielding varieties of rice and wheat and intensive farming technologies which sidelined the production of hitherto main staple foods of the masses, i.e., millets, to marginal situations where no other food crops can be grown. The decline in the cultivation of nutritionally rich millets was further facilitated by the financial incentives and subsidies provided to rice and wheat cultivation and policy bias against millets. However, with the recent awareness about nutritional and health benefits ushered by millet cultivation and consumption, and the imperatives of promoting millets cultivation to mitigate climate change effects on food production, millets are becoming important again. In this direction, to strengthen the millets value chain, it is required to enhance supply and demand of millets through promotion of awareness and policy initiatives. The present status, strategies for bringing millets to the mainstream of food and nutritional security, through enhancing supply and consumption by increasing consumer awareness, facilitating manufacture and marketing of millet products as well as providing policy push for the complete millets value chain are discussed.