Speakers at two-day annual group meetings on pearl millet and small millets being held here said there are challenges in expanding the area under millets, particularly the minor millets, as the farming community is unsure about the marketing facilities and remunerative price.
Speakers including Assistant Director General of ICAR S.K. Pradhan, Director of Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) C. Tara Satyavathi, Director (Research) of Prof. Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University P. Raghurami Reddy, Director of Central Arid Zone Research Institute O.P. Yadav and others said there was an opportunity to give a major push for increasing the area under millets, productivity and production in the backdrop changing dietary patterns with focus on millets.
Mr. Yadav said the area under millets was coming down where the productivity of other crops such as maize, cotton, paddy and others was up. From 1950s the area under millets had come down by 70%, he disclosed and stated that maize which was 80% food crop and 20% feed/fodder crop in the 1980s had changed as 15% food and 85% feed/fodder crop by 2020.
Stating that rapid decline in the consumption of millets due to dietary patterns till recently had reduced millets to orphan crops, Mr. Raghurami Reddy said their total area of cultivation had come down to 6% now from 40% in the 1950s. Mr. Pradhan said the requirement of millets was estimated at about 25 million tonnes by 2030 although present rate of production could take it up to 20 million tonnes from the existing 16 million tonnes.
Director of Nutri-Hub in IIMR B. Dayakar Rao said positioning of millets in the emerging markets would hold key for expansion of their extent and production. Millets was never a problem of supply but had been a problem of demand.
A total of 32 speakers comprising subject matter specialists, various stake holders and policy experts presented their views on the present scenario of millets, current product profiles and target production views, ecologies of millets and alternate uses of millets.
