Better yield and post-harvest management must for scaling up millets produce, says Ashok Dalwai

Former NRAA CEO stresses urgent need for improved post-harvest millet management to enhance production, food security in India.

“There’s an immediate need to address the concerns in post-harvest management of millets if their production and consumption are to be scaled up and food security is to be sustained in a populous country like India,” former Chief Executive Officer of the National Rain-fed Area Authority (NRAA) Ashok Dalwai said.

“The green revolution has failed on the post-harvest management area resulting in poor returns to the producer (farmers) most of the times and wastage of the produce some times,” Mr. Dalwai said at a discussion on “Status, Issues, Strategies on Mainstreaming Millets as Commodity of the Decade” as part of the sixth edition of the International Nutri Cereal Convention in Hyderabad on Friday (October 18, 2024).

He stated that production of millets was required to reach 80 million tonnes by 2050 to achieve food security and to achieve 400 million tonnes of total foodgrain production by that time in the country and it would be possible with an increase in productivity (yield) from the present (average) 1.2 tonnes per hectare to 2.5 tonnes per hectare and an increase in the area of cultivation from 18 million hectares to 35 million hectares.

Better yields and returns had also forced the farmers to give up millet production and go for other cereals such as paddy and wheat and as a result the area of cultivation had come down from 43 million hectares in 1965 to 18 million hectares in 2024. He blamed lack of proper impetus on research for the dip in productivity as there was only one institute (IIMR) for millets against eight for paddy and wheat in the country. He suggested the scientists go for intra-species gene-editing for better yields.

Former Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture Sanjay Agarwal said there was no major change in the farmers’ income in case of millets despite increase in the demand. He felt that mapping and exchange of good and innovative cultivation practices was needed as the demand for gluten-free and low glycemic index or smart food made of millets was high not only in India but globally too.

Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) V.P. Sharma said productivity of millets needs to be improved considerably to make their cultivation lucrative to the farming community with higher returns, despite increase in the support price in recent years. He stated that profit in millet cultivation was about ₹10,000 per hectare against 2.5 to 3 times higher than that in case of paddy.

Director General of NIRD-PR G. Narendra Kumar, Director of Nutri Hub (IIMR) B. Dayakar Rao, Ministers of Agriculture Ganesh Joshi (Uttarakhand) and P. Prasad (Kerala) and others spoke at the event.