The National Summit and Millet Gala was organised by Action for Social Advancement in collaboration with Bioversity International, Rome at Jehan Numa Palace Hotel on Saturday. The event looked at sensitisation of key stakeholders about the millet crops with regard to its nutrition, climate change mitigation value, and importance for agro-biodiversity.
The event was well attended by members of different agencies from Government, Agriculture Universities, NGOs, private sectors and village resource persons from MP, Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu who are engaged in promoting millets as a source of nutrition among children, tribal population especially women and educating the farmers about affects of climate change on farming of millets.
Swarna Vyas, a nutritionist at Nutrinics spoke about the iron deficiency and infertility problems which can be tackled with minor millets. She further stressed on how 80% of North India has wheat intolerance and that obesity can be cured by consumption of minor millets to balance metabolism.
The technical sessions during the summit raised various concerns related to the declining production area of millets, stagnating productivity and poor value chain development. However there has been positive signals of growing awareness and consumption of millets by the urban middle class due to its high nutritive value.
Professor MS Swaminathan in a video message to the conference termed millet as cilmate smart crop and expressed his satisfaction of millet being included in the National Food Security Act for to be distributed through the public distribution system.
MM Upadhyay, former Agriculture Production Commissioner of Madhya Pradesh stressed the need of millet related research and active extension work for improved milled farming practices among the farmers.
“Millets can grow in poor quality soil and create a good plan B for food security. With the growing population and the climate change scenario food security may become an issue in the future,” said Dayakar Rao from Indian Institute of Millet Research, Hyderabad.