Minor Millets in India

Farmer from Karnataka State in his finger millet field. Credit: Stefano Padulosi

Once widely consumed in India and playing a key role in household food security and dietary diversity, in the last two decades, minor millets have been supplanted by rice as the staple grain. This case study attempts to demonstrate the nutritional and income generating opportunities associated with the consumption of minor millets in India. 

The Problem

In spite of several national nutritional intervention programs, India faces huge nutrition challenges as the prevalence of micronutrient malnutrition continues to be a major public health problem, with an associated economic cost of 0.8 to 2.4 per cent of the GDP. Estimates from the most recent National Family Health Survey have indicated that about 46 per cent of the children under five years of age, particularly those living in rural areas, are moderately to severely underweight (thin for age), 38 per cent are moderately to severely stunted (short for age), and approximately 19 per cent are moderately to severely wasted (thin for height).

Agrobiodiversity

The nutrition challenges faced by India are largely due to overdependence on a handful of species, such as rice, maize, wheat, and potatoes. Less attention by researchers on underutilized species (NUS) translates into missed nutrition and health opportunities, since many underutilized species offer a broad range of macro and micronutrients than those available in major staple crops. 

One such group of highly promising crops is that of minor millets. They are called ‘minor’ because of the lack of research investment they attract, and their limited commercial importance in terms of area, production and consumption patterns. Once widely consumed in India and playing a key role in household food security and dietary diversity, in the last two decades these millets have been supplanted by rice as the staple grain. 

Millets are hardy crops and are quite resilient to a variety of agro-climatic adversities, such as poor soil fertility, and limited rainfall. In view of their superior adaptability (compared for instance with rice or maize), millets play an important role in supporting marginal agriculture, such as that commonly practiced in the hilly and semi-arid regions of India. 

Minor millets are nutritionally comparable, or even superior, to staple cereals such as rice and wheat. Compared with rice, 100 g of cooked foxtail millet contains almost twice the amount of protein, finger millet over 38 times the amount of calcium, and little millet more than nine times the amount of iron. Millets are rich in vitamins, minerals (calcium and iron in particular), Sulphur-containing amino acids and phytochemicals. They also contain high proportions of non-starchy polysaccharides and dietary fiber. Their slow release of sugar upon ingestion makes them ideal food for diabetic patients, whereas the lack of gluten in their grains makes them good food for coeliac-affected people.

 

The Project

Recognizing the importance of minor millets, particularly local landraces, for food and nutritional security, a 10-year project was carried out from 2001 to 2010 in order to promote their conservation and sustainable utilization. The project, known as the IFAD NUS project, supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and coordinated by Bioversity International, aimed at enhancing the contribution of neglected and underutilized species (NUS) – minor millets among them – in strengthening food security and incomes for the poor. Using highly inter-connected, community-based conservation through-use interventions, as well as participatory methods and tools, the project targeted smallholder farmers who were socio-economically disadvantaged with respect to access to nutritious food.

Using highly inter-connected, community-based conservation through-use interventions, as well as participatory methods and tools, the project targeted smallholder farmers who were socio-economically disadvantaged with respect to access to food and more so to nutritious food. The project used an eight-step approach to enhance the use of minor millets in India:

  1. Provision and conservation of genetic material
  2. Development of better varieties to promote use
  3. Development of improved cultivation practices
  4. Development of more efficient processing technologies
  5. Nutritional and industrial characterization of crops and products
  6. Buildup of sustainable enterprises
  7. Training of community members
  8. Raising of public awareness

Impact

  • Health: Millet foods were considered very tasty to more than 85% of school children and were found to represent a good source of micronutrients, with the potential to improve the nutritional status of schoolchildren.
  • Policy: Concerted efforts to promote the nutritional and health benefits of minor millets successfully influenced public policy to include these grains in government-sponsored school feeding programs and to subsidize public distribution systems, including millets, to target socio-economically and nutritionally-vulnerable populations.

Lessons Learned

The project was able to demonstrate that currently marginalized crops can be successfully used to create self-sustainable, agricultural-based enterprises that can support income generation in marginal areas of India, while strengthening food and nutrition security through the better use of culturally-adequate, nutritious crops. Furthermore, considering the high incidence of marginal land, poor soils, and scarcity of water in many regions of India, the suitability of minor millets to grow in difficult edaphic and climatic conditions compared with other commodity crops make them ideal candidates to be used in climate change adaptation strategies in agriculture.

Barriers to the greater promotion of millets are mostly of a policy nature, with heavy subsidies still being allocated to other commodity cereals, such as rice. Greater efforts are thus needed in order to convince policy makers to integrate minor millets into India’s subsidized public distribution system (PDS). Such policies would not only move in the direction of enhanced food security, but would also support more resilient production systems in view of the global changes that are predicted to seriously affect the Indian continent in the coming decades. 

Continued lobbying for the inclusion of minor millets in school-feeding programs is also advocated, as children could greatly benefit from the nutrients that are mobilized through a greater consumption of these crops and their products. Although the IFAD NUS project has been successful in demonstrating the value of certain interventions, more work is needed to scale-up approaches, methods, and tools in wider areas of India. Greater government investment is also needed to continue developing superior varieties of minor millets as well as processing technologies that can satisfy increased demands for millet-based products across India, along with enabling policies to support their dissemination and adoption by consumers.