Food security assured, now thrust is on nutritional security, says Minister B.C. Patil 

He was speaking aftert inaugurating millet festival organised at the Karnataka Exhibition Grounds

Minister for Agriculture B.C. Patil said here on Wednesday that farmers of the country have ensured food security by ensuring record growth in agricultural production and the focus is now on securing nutritional security.

He was speaking after inaugurating the Siri Dhanya Mela or millet festival organised at the Karnataka Exhibition Grounds as part of the International Year of Millet in the city. The Minister said there was a time when 38 crore people of the country could not be fed and India lacked food security and had to import food from other countries.

 But post green revolution, the country was not only self-sufficient in food but was exporting food to other countries. From a net importer India has become a net exporter, said Mr. Patil, adding that the current thrust was on addressing nutritional and protein deficiency for which millet was a panacea.

However, Mr.Patil expressed concern that the food grown was increasingly becoming toxic due to high use of chemical insecticides, pesticides and fertilizers and lacked nutrition. Hence the current focus was on organic food production besides thrust on millets to ensure nutritional security.

The Minister said millet was once considered the food of the poor but the unhealthy lifestyle and increase in diabetes, blood pressure and cardiac diseases has created awareness among the people of nutritional qualities in millets and were now patronised by the rich as well. Even farmers can benefit from growing millets as apart from assured market the cost of cultivation was low and could be grown even under arid conditions.

The State government was giving thrust on cultivation of millets and the Department of Agriculture was disbursing ₹10,000 per hectare for cultivating six types of millets, to the farmers, said Mr. Patil.

He noted that lot of youngsters were turning their back on agriculture and migrating to cities in search of jobs. But there are progressive farmers who have proved that agriculture was lucrative.