In one of the pre-launch celebrations programmes of the International Year of Millets-2023 here on Thursday, the Ministry of Agriculture reached out to representatives of various countries in India to promote millets internationally. Both External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar addressed the event and urged for global focus on millets for its nutritional and health benefits.
The Agriculture Ministry has been holding such programmes to create awareness and a sense of public participation about millets. Mr. Tomar said International Year of Millets-2023 would provide an opportunity to globally promote millets as nutritious cereals and added that his Ministry was working in mission mode to increase its production and consumption. “The time has come for the Public Distribution System to shift the focus of distribution programmes from basic calories to provide a more diverse food basket that includes millets to improve the nutritional status of pre-school children and women of reproductive age,” he said.
Considering the nutritional value of millets, Mr. Tomar said the Centre had notified it as a nutritious cereal in April 2018 and had also been included under the Poshan Mission campaign. “Government is providing support to start-up entrepreneurs for recipes and value-added products to promote consumption of millet,” he added.
He said the NITI Aayog and the World Food Programme intended to identify and solve the challenges in millet production in a systematic and effective manner. “The partnership will focus on mainstreaming millets and support India in taking the lead globally in knowledge exchange using the opportunities in the form of the International Year of Millets,” he said.
Mr. Jaishankar said millets had increasing relevance in the world today in the backdrop of COVID 19, climate change and conflicts. Millets were important for food security as well as international relations. He said one of the biggest concerns which had arisen from the Ukraine conflict was the inability of two major food producers. The External Affairs Minister said Ukraine was the leading exporter of wheat and the conflict led to escalating food prices, speculation and shortages. “I think de-risking the global economy requires more decentralised production. It requires more self-reliance; it requires certainly a willingness on the part of countries to not only do more for themselves, but to help each other out. And that is the message of the International Year of Millets,” he said urging the countries to propagate the consumption of millets. “We would like to encourage the production of millets. We would like even the countries who may not directly be consuming or producing them really to look at it as part of a larger global food security scenario,” Mr. Jaishankar said.
