Council on Energy, Environment and Water Integrated | International | Independent
The year 2024 has spikes in extreme weather — from heat to floods. extreme heat is not just uncomfortable; it severely affects agriculture, especially in India, where 47 per cent of the population depends on agriculture for livelihood. Wheat crops, in particular, suffer as sudden surges in temperature shrivel grains, reducing both quality and yield.
During the heatwave in 2022, wheat yields fell by 4.9 per cent, 4.1 per cent, and 3.5 per cent in Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, respectively. The impact on agriculture is further exacerbated by erratic rainfall. As per a recent study by the CEEW, 11 per cent of tehsils in the agriculturally critical rain-fed parts of the Indo-Gangetic plain, northeast India and the upper Himalayan region saw a decrease in southwest monsoon rainfall.
Making India’s food system resilient is no longer a matter of choice.
The millet momentum, which started in 2017 and culminated with the close of the International Year of Millet on 29 March this year, must continue and be replicated across the larger food system to catapult it towards sustainability. The millet movement was not just about building resilience, improving livelihoods and boosting health; it was guided by three principles that shaped its actions and policies, which can be adopted to build a sustainable food future for India. So how and what can India’s food system learn from six years of progress of the National Millet Mission?
Emotive Lens/CEEW
First, it is essential to use an approach that capitalises on the relationships and connections within the food system. The Odisha Millets Mission is a prime example. It connects state public procurement and nutrition programmes with agricultural initiatives. Between the farm and the fork, it converges with another flagship initiative of the state, Mission Shakti, to promote women-led entrepreneurship in millet processing, value addition and distribution.
The Council on Energy, Environment and Water’s (CEEW) book Millet Mantra (2024) tells the story of Ganga Singh from Odisha’s Keonjhar, one of many women who have benefitted from the systems approach of the mission. Singh is the president of the Krishna SHG and a resilient entrepreneur who converts ragi into flour at her micro-processing unit. The flour is then used by the Anganwadi workers to make ragi laddus that improve the nutrition of children in the district, creating a locally suitable, sustainable and nutritious food system. Such 360-degree efforts, like the One District, One Product initiative, which supports the development and leverages the connections of agri-food value chains of locally suitable produce from apples in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh, to spices in Idukki, Kerala, can deliver a triple win. They improve farmer livelihoods, creating a vibrant MSME sector and better the nutrition security of the state in a holistic manner. A locally suitable systems approach reduces trade-offs and creates positive synergies.
Second, shifting demand-side preferences by leveraging cultural heritage can promote indigenous foods that have lost significance over time. Millets have been around for millennia and are integral to festivities and cultures around the world. Last year, we talked to chefs from the Chefs’ Manifesto — a collective of global chefs who push for a sustainable food system — who brought back millets on their menu. Globally renowned, Chef Pierre Thiam from Senegal created Yolélé, a snack brand which brought fonio (an ancient grain from the Sahel region of Africa) to the high streets of New York with fonio sea salt chips and pilafs that gave the grain a modern twist. Meanwhile, South Africa’s Chef Mokgadi Itsweng recreates her grandmother’s sorghum and bambara nut stew and reminds South Africans of their sustainable culinary heritage. In India, too, millets have been a part of cultural and culinary identities. In Assam and Meghalaya, kodo and raishan millets have been traditionally used as an alternative to rice, while in Odisha, dried millets adorn the entrances of people’s houses. Invoking narratives of cultural history and heritage can appeal to people’s sense of belonging and create a lasting shift towards more millet consumption. Such efforts must be replicated across other local and indigenous foods such as Mahua found in many parts of central, southern and western India and Lingdi (fiddlehead ferns) found in the Himalayan and eastern regions to enable diversity, seasonality and locality in food choices.
Third, decentralising the agricultural training, knowledge dissemination, and R&D systems can leverage the benefits of locally suited crops and practices. Odisha became the first state to commercially release four varieties of ragi seeds that were being historically cultivated by farmers through traditional methods. These varieties taste better, have bigger grains, and in some cases, perform better than the conventional varieties released centrally by the government or the private sector. This is because they have been selected by farmers based on their local ecological suitability, resilience to climate extremes, and traditional cooking and consumption habits. Such approaches that respect and further local knowledge should be mainstreamed across other varieties of food grains. Similarly, the agricultural last-mile knowledge and training support system that operates mostly in a centralised manner should evolve to also include traditional and local practices in its research and development. Some practices that we could benefit from adopting are Navdanaya (a type of traditional multi and inter-cropping practice in which nine different crops are planted over a year) in Andhra Pradesh and Barah Anaaj (a type of traditional multi and inter-cropping practice in which twelve different crops are planted over a year) in Uttrakhand.
Emotive Lens/CEEW
The Green Revolution enabled India to move from food scarcity to food security. To move from food security to nutrition security, which promises a sustainable food future for our farms and farmers, we all must learn from the millet movement to work with crops, communities, and cultures holistically.
Karan Shinghal is a consultant with the Sustainable Food System team at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). Send your comments to [email protected]
Add new comment