In 2018, India celebrated the year of millet and after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a proposal to the United Nations to emphasize the importance of encouraging millets as healthy food, the world is now celebrating the International Year of Millets. This all happened because of the PM’s efforts, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said.
She was speaking after inaugurating the millet conclave-2022 and exhibition, organised at University of Agriculture Sciences in Raichur on Saturday. The programme was jointly organised by UAS Raichur and NABARD.
She said that many States are growing millets and exporting to other countries. As a result of this, India has now become the fifth largest country in the world with regards to export of millets.
“The Union government has been focusing on encouraging farmers to grow the millets by giving them ₹10,000 as incentive and 60% of the areas are now covered with millet production.”
The Finance Minister said that Karnataka is the one of the leading States to grow millets, with the assistance of NABARD, and its contribution to the nation was immense.
“Several years earlier, people were importing quinoa. But, they are growing millets which is also giving the same results as quinoa.”
She further said that the Union government has declared that no tax would be charged for those who establish food processing units under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat scheme, ensuring encouragement to millet production.
Ms. Sitharaman said that Kalyana Karnataka will soon get a millet production unit to create jobs especially for women, and those who will establish such units will get complete income tax exemption for years. Therefore, she urged students to get involved in the production of millets.
She declared that a prize of ₹1 crore would be given to each of the three startups, which have encouraged and marketed millets, and also a grant of ₹25 crore will be released under NABARD to the University of Agriculture Sciences, Raichur, to establish processing units and encourage growing millets.
Narendra Singh Tomar, Union Minister for Agriculture, said that the Prime Minister has been putting efforts to increase the farmers’ benefits with different programmes in eight years of his term.
The Minister appealed to farmers to use the new technology to reduce the expenditure and use micro-irrigation to increase the benefits and Mr. Tomar also said that ₹6,800 crore was spent to establish 10,000 food producers organisations.
He also added that the Union government has released ₹1,18,000 crore as compensation to those who lost crops due to natural disaster.
