Indigenous Millet Cultivation Initiative | 27 Aug 2024

Why in News?

Recently, An Millet Cultivation Initiative in Udaipur district’s Jhadol block has revived the cultivation of indigenous millet varieties among a new generation of farmers, offering both livelihood incentives and a focus on natural farming.

Key Points

• The pilot project has sought to revive millet varieties such as finger millet, proso millet, foxtail millet, and kodo millet, with the objective of enhancing local livelihoods and promoting sustainable agricultural practices.
  • The farmers in Jhadol have faced crop losses after adopting chemically intensive farm practices and replacing traditional crop diversification, such as multi-cropping, with fast-paying commercial mono-cropping.
• The millet varieties identified were essentially called minor millets and were locally known as kuri, batti, kodra, cheena, samlai, and maal.
• Anganwadi centres functioning in Udaipur district have started including millet-based recipes for children as a nutrition supplement.
• Udaipur-based voluntary group Seva Mandir took up the project through a programme associate to facilitate grassroots cultivation of minor millets.
  • Encouraged by the outcome of the millet intervention, Seva Mandir has recently come up with a framework for market access to be created with 1,000 farmers.