Millets have huge potential for food, nutrition security: NITI Aayog report
1 min read . Updated: 29 Apr 2023, 05:28 PM IST
PremiumMillets which were once an integral part of the Indian diets have been almost forgotten due to various demand and supply challenges.
New Delhi: Millets, which are climate resilient crops and are environment friendly, have great potential for food and nutritional security of the country but these have almost gone out of the Indian diet due to various reasons, said a NITI Aayog report.
The report titled ‘Promoting millets in diets, best practices across states and union territories of India’, called for replicating the best practices adopted by the states to support these crops. It said that millets which were once an integral part of the Indian diets have been almost forgotten due to various demand and supply challenges.
Some of the demand side factors include change in consumer taste and preference due to increasing urbanization and per capita income, lack of traditional knowledge to prepare millets based recipes, lower shelf life of milled grains and mainstreaming of rice and wheat in social safety net programmes.
The supply side challenges include weak value chain in production and processing of millets, lack of industrial demand for value-added millet products discouraging farmers from cultivating millets, low profitability and low research and development to improve production, yield and value addition of millet products.
The report makes an analysis of best practices adopted by different state governments and organizations on various aspects related to millets, saying it is critical to enable replication and further boosting up their production and consumption. It can serve as a guiding repository to revive and mainstream millets in our diets, the report said.