Dr. Arvind Kumar*
The world is currently experiencing the disastrous effects of climate change, including storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires, cyclones, and sea level rise. Another issue that has arisen as a result of climatic disruptions and is demanding our immediate attention is global food security. World is facing agrarian as well as nutritional challenges. Agricultural lands with irrigation facilities have been exploited to maximum, and hence we need to focus on further increase grain production. The majority of our food crops now require a lot of water which rely significantly on irrigation and rainfall. Sustainable crop substitutes are needed to meet the world hunger (cereal demand) and to improve income of farmers. There is an ever-growing global population that needs sufficient and healthy food amidst climate emergencies and depleting natural resources. Malnutrition, chronic diseases, adult overweight, and obesity are just a few of the issues with world health and most are caused by bad diets with an unbalanced nutrient composition.
Rightly said by FAO- As the global agrifood systems face challenges efforts need to be scaled up not just to promote resilient cereals which can provide an affordable and nutritious option but also can play an important role and contribute to our collective efforts to empower smallholder farmers, achieve sustainable development, eliminate hunger, adapt to climate change, promote biodiversity, and transform agrifood systems. The overuse of land resources caused by the existing agricultural practices has decreased soil fertility and caused water waste, making farmers more vulnerable. Farmers have committed suicide as a result, and many emerging nations are experiencing an agrarian crisis. There may not be a miracle solution; instead, we must take thoughtful steps and employ a variety of techniques to adjust to the more recent environmental realities. One of these entails funding and supporting food crops that are nutrient-dense, promotes food security, and require little water.
Finding a sustainable alternative
The United Nations General Assembly recently declared 2023 to be the International Year of Millets, thanks in large part to India’s backing and that of another 72 nations. Millets can be grown with minimal inputs and maintenance and can adapt to climate shocks, expanding production of millets can transform local agrifood systems to be more efficient, resilient and inclusive. The ability of millets to grow in poor, degraded soils can also provide land cover in arid areas, reducing soil degradation and supporting biodiversity. Millets are versatile, need 70% less water than rice to grow, take half as long to mature as wheat, and use 40% less energy to process. They offer a comprehensive answer for sustained food security in the face of drought, water shortage, and climate change. They are also abundant in nutrients. Millets are a great source of antioxidants and help probiotics function more effectively, which may have positive effects on your health. They contribute to the body’s immune system and provide a remedy for childhood malnutrition and iron deficiency anaemia. There is evidence that millets have a better nutritional value than other cereal crops. By turning it into essentially a people’s movement with a multi-stakeholder consultative approach and involving partners like farmers, consumers, markets, states, corporations, and government departments, a focused approach has been used with this resolution.
Millets are cereal, like rice or wheat, but used to be referred to as coarse cereals, an obvious reference to the external texture which is not smooth. All cereals are a rich source of carbohydrate but millets also come with more protein, dietary fibre, iron and calcium content than rice or wheat. In a 2018 notification, the government says millets are a powerhouse of nutrients and that research had shown millets as good defence in the fight against diabetes. Millets have a low glycemic index, which means such foods have lesser impact on blood glucose levels than foods that are higher up in the index. To help consumers understand the benefits better, the government has changed the nomenclature from coarse grains to Nutricereals.
Harnessing millets to tackle multiple stresses
Diets having a low environmental effect are protective of biodiversity and ecosystems, which helps ensure access to food and nutrition. Without sacrificing nutritional value, crop diversification through the use of more coarse grains, such millets, can increase food production, lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and improve climate resilience. Millets were identified as a feasible choice for ensuring food security and environmental resilience in a quantitative analysis of changing monsoon cereal production in India.
Along with having the highest levels of protein and iron, the monsoon cereals also have the lowest levels of energy, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions. Consuming millet can help with a number of problems since it is a nutrient-rich grain that is high in dietary fibre, vitamins, and minerals like folic acid, vitamin B6, B-carotene, and niacin. These minerals include calcium, iron, zinc, and magnesium. Millets are the only group of crops that can be grown in arid locations, with minimal water requirements, shorter growing seasons, and the capacity to withstand a wide variety of temperatures, making them the answer to the global climate crisis.
Efforts made by India to promote Millet Grains
The Indian government has been leading a drive to promote millet over the past few years, both domestically and abroad. India positioned itself as a global hub for millets by stimulating and promoting millet cultivation. In order to address systemic environmental concerns as well as issues of nutritional security, the Indian government has been on a mission to promote the branding and production of millets since 2018. With 18% of the world’s millets produced and about 20% of the land under cultivation, India can proudly claim to be the world’s largest millets producer. Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra are India’s three largest contributors, in that order.
Several measures are also being implemented under the National Food Security Program to improve millet output in India. The actions entail establishing a centre for excellence as well as the Millet Mission in numerous Indian states. The World Food Program (WFP) and Niti Aayog, signed a Statement of Intent in 2021 to focus on developing climate resilient agriculture for improved food security in India. Included in this is a stronger focus on mainstreaming millets. Through the development of knowledge management platforms and the promotion of knowledge exchange, the programme will also look into how to use India’s millet expertise to aid other developing nations.
What more needs to be done to make it a success?
There needs to be a major push to establish the millet ecosystem; specifically the economic aspect when it comes to farmers’ crop selection, which probably contributes to the historical trend towards the cultivation of rice and wheat due to government MSP and PDS for the National Food Security Programs highly skewed in favour of wheat and paddy and do not provide farmers with an incentive to produce other goods. Therefore this needs to be altered in order to gain sustainable results.
Although millet has been consumed traditionally over the years, but there has recently been a reduction in millet consumption due to hurdles related to cost, flavour, perception, and availability. A large majority of the consumers in India and other countries prefer consuming paddy because of the ease of cooking and also because of their habits. However, it is to be noted that millets have a short shelf life depending on humidity, temperature, and small market size. This calls for more awareness creation drives on the nutritive values and setting up better storage facilities for the crop for increasing its longevity.
An in-depth strategy for improving the whole value chain by addressing the gaps is provided in a white paper on “Mainstreaming Millets for Nutrition Security” in India published in 2021. It also calls for replicating scalable methods across states for millet promotion across the nation. With established platforms for popularisation and knowledge dissemination for the global market, India’s G20 presidency is the ideal time to take advantage of the Year of Millets campaign for global awareness. This will drive demand and increase supply for efficient market links for this wonderful super pill.
Existing limitations, i.e. the presence of anti-nutritional factors and low sensory acceptability of millet-based products, can be overcome by the scientific interventions. The anti-nutritional factors can be inactivated by processing methods like cooking, roasting, germination and fermentation. The sensory acceptability of millet-based products can be enhanced by mixing millet flours with other flours of high acceptability and preparing composite foods. The use of millets in commercial/packaged food will encourage farmers to grow millets and will open new opportunities and revitalize the farmers. The inclusion of millet-based foods in international, national and state-level feeding programs will help to overcome the existing nutrient deficiencies of protein, calcium and iron in developing countries. With climate change acting as the pivot, this will result in a paradigm shift from food security to nutritional security. It’s time to realize millets’ full potential by raising consumer awareness of their nutritional benefits and influencing their purchasing decisions which can be delegated to civil societies who have a broad bandwidth at grassroot level. Therefore need of hour is to conserve these underutilized crops for food security and also for sustaining the agro-diversity. Traditional farming systems need to be strengthened to achieve the goals of sustainable development and biodiversity conservation.
*President, India Water Foundation
