Millets, An Old Concept To Adapt To New Change
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Transcript of Millets, An Old Concept To Adapt To New Change
Millets–
an old concept to adapt to new change
.
Farmland use systems in North East India
Sericulture basedShifting cultivation with home gardens
Livestock based Exclusive shifting cultivation
Agri-horti-silvipastralShifting cultivation with valley agriculture
Horti-silvicultureWet rice terrace cultivation, together with shifting cultivation
Cash crop based systems (Broom grass, pine apple and other horticultural crops)
Wet rice cultivation as well as upland rain fed agriculture but not shifting cultivation
Agriculture with alderExclusive wet rice terraces cultivation, irrigated
Mixed homestead gardenWet rice cultivation, no terraces
Agroforestry systemsAgricultural practices
Land use
Banana based agro-forestry
Areca nut based
homegarden
Jhum lands
Mustard cultivation
Plantation
Tobacco cultivation
Homegardens
Wet rice cultivation Terrace cultivation
Different agricultural systems and the major crops grown therein
Type of agricultural Major crops grown
Jhum Paddy+maize+milletschillies+vegetables
Valley
Wet rice cultivation Rice, millets
Double cropping Paddy+maize →
mustard/vegetables/tobacco
Rotational bush fallow Paddy+maize+chillies
Home garden Fruits+ginger+Vegetables
Other field practices Terrace cultivation
Horticultural plantations
Tea cultivation
Cardamom cultivation
Estimated diversities of major crops in N. E. India
Source : NBPGR-NE Region
78 taxaBamboo
19 taxaSugarcane
700 taxaOrchids
16 taxaBanana
17 spp. + 52 vars.Citrus
230Yams
300Taros
15 races, 3 sub races – 1200+
???
Maize
Millets
9650Rice
Estimated diversitiesCrop (s)
Distribution of wild relatives of cultivated
crops in India and as a whole in the
northeastern hill region
Crop Number of Species
NE Himalaya India• Cereals 16 60
• Legumes 6 33
• Fruits 51 109
• Vegetables 27 64
• Oil seeds 1 12
• Fibre crops 5 24
• Spices and
condiments 13 27
• Miscellaneous 13 26
• Total 132 (37.18%) 355
Source: Upadhyay and Sundriyal, 1998
Cereals 2
Millets 2
Vegetable and pulses 17
Condiments and spices 3
Oil yielding 3
Narcotics 1
Fibre yielding 1
Total 33
Rice germplasm 48
Upland 26
Wetland 21
Upland + wetland 1
Corps grown by the Chakmas’ in adjoining villages of Namdapha
National Park
Threats to Agrobiodiversity
• The traditional system was sustainable in the past, but changing now
• Fast changes are taking place in:– Landscapes
– Farming systems
– Individual crops
– People’s lifestyles
– Breaking of traditional sytems
Productivity Sustainability
Change in Ecosystem Function
Reduction inAnimal & Microbial
Diversity
Reductionin Plant
Biodiversity
Change inResourceavailability
Intensification ofIntensification ofIntensification ofIntensification of
ManagementManagementManagementManagement
InterventionInterventionInterventionIntervention
Biodiversity therefore is a keystone in sustainability, and its Biodiversity therefore is a keystone in sustainability, and its loss loss
has been one of the common outcomes of agricultural intensificahas been one of the common outcomes of agricultural intensificationtion
Impact of agricultural intensificationon an agroecosystem
The Card
• Millets are produced in 18.50 million ha by 28 countries covering 30% of the continent. There are nine species which form major sources of energy and protein for about 130 million people.
• Millets are consumed as staple food (78%), drinks and other uses(20%). Feed use is still very small (2%). As food, they are nutritionally equivalent or superior to most cereals; containing high levels of methionine, cystine, and other vital amino acids for human health. They are also unique sources of pro-vitamin A (yellow pearl millets) and micronutrients (Zn, Fe and Cu) which are especiallyhigh in finger millet.
• Future trends need increasing productivity and trade (regionally and internationally) and adding value to products by improving/increasing processing and utilization in industry. More research-for-development (R4D) and networking are required to achieve these.
Millet Production Area
• Region/Country Area Production (million ha) (million tons)
• AFRICA (28 countries) 18.50 11.36 -East and Central Africa (8 countries) 3.36 2.01 -Southern Africa (10 countries) 1.20 0.75 -West Africa (10 countries) 13.94 8.60
• ASIA 16.99 15.17
• India 13.95 10.70• China (mostly foxtail millet) 1.90 3.67 • USA (mostly proso millet) 0.15 0.18 • Argentina (mostly proso millet) 0.04 0.06 • World (all cultivated millet species) 38.10 28.38
• Production of millets is still at subsistence level by smallholders (0.3-5.0 ha farm size) and consumed as staple food and drink in most areas.
• These millets production areas coincide very well with where most of the poor live
• One most significant importance of the millets, which present them as focus for major agricultural research and development efforts, is their widespread adaptation in marginal production and niche areas.
• They provide farmers with the best available opportunity for reliable harvest, food and nutrition in environments with erratic and scanty rainfall, and low soil fertility levels
• About 80% of the world’s millet is used as food, with the remaining being used for stockfeed (2%), beers (local and industrial), other uses (15%) and bird seed
• Animal feed as forage, grain and residue is still insignificant
Value Addition
• Millets have good grain qualities suitable for processing.
• Processing of the grain for many end uses involves primary (wetting, dehulling and milling) and secondary (fermentation, malting, extrusion, glaking, popping and roasting) operations.
• Being a staple and consumed at household levels, processing must be considered at both traditional and industrial levels, involving small, medium and large-scale entrepreneurs.
The Market
• The greatest constraint in the realization of importance of millets is in their handling and limited use by the producers, processors and consumers. The harvesting, threshing, and processing for food are mainly done by women at the household level.
• Commercially, there is a slow and emerging trend in the industrial use of millets at the national and regional levels.
• Because of its nature and ecology of production areas, the mainly cultural and household processing and consumption pattern is yielding to more and more cottage, medium and large scale practices
Research-4-Development
• There are important researchable and development issues that confound or influence the importance and status of millets, and their potential in commercialization and trade.
• Adaptation and improvement of local varieties and local variety derived materials have been the forms of research
• Demand would also be enhanced through knowledge and use of grain technological and nutritional qualities of the millets by industries in both developing and developed world.
• Productivity increase of millets would surely entice processing industries and markets for value-adding and economic returns.
Research-for-development (R4D) should focus on strategies to enhance and expand demand, in the short-, medium- and long-term. Recommended strategies would include:
– 1. Increasing production and productivity: to improve competitiveness and close up deficit gaps; and ensuring food and nutrition security.
– 2. Promoting millets for commercialization and markets through:
- improvement of processing and utilization methods and technologies13, including fermentation, malting, steaming, micro milling, compositing and product development.
- diversifying end-use products to include ready made, non-conventional and better-packaged, more presentable conventional foods.
- Expanding the use of pearl millets in livestock feed industry
- Expanding the use of millets in malting, brewing and by-products industries
- Expanding the options for millets use in novel food products, novel traits, biofortified food products (using their unique qualities with high levels of Copper, Iron, Zinc, Magnesium and Manganese nutritional convenience and health snack foods.
- Evaluating, developing and emphasizing grain and food product qualities and standards for industry and end uses
- Developing sustainable regional trade in millets raw and finished products14 through improving market channels and trading volume with maintenance of quality and standards
– 3. Increasing and diversifying millets utilization through
- Technology, knowledge, and information dissemination, transfer and exchange13 including equipments and facilities, and markets
- strengthening and creating new linkages and human resources development through training, education and networking within and across sub-regions
- expanding awareness to improve status of millets by generating healthy government policy environment
- better utilization and involvement of professional expertise, and interdisciplinarity
- closer interactions between public and private sectors including producers, consumers, processors, intermediaries mainly traders and middlemen, and distributors
Over all,…
• Millets are still the staple food for millions of poor people.
• Being high-energy nutritious grains make them useful components of dietary and nutritional balance in foods.
• However, the continued and future importance of millets as food are in food and nutrition security due to them having good amounts of untapped potential for yield increases through hybrid development and production, superior yield gains under drought and resource-poor environments
• Production of good grain qualities suitable for processing, and unique nutritive values with significant amounts of essential amino acids (lysine and methionine) minerals (especially micronutrients including calcium, zinc, iron and phosphorus) and vitamin A (in form of beta-carotene in yellow endosperm pearl millet); the quantities, qualities and bio availability of which need more improvement as reviewed in the grain properties and utilization potential of millets.
The Research Thrust
On the research-for-development front to increase production and productivity, more
efforts should be put on:
– developing and producing millet hybrids (topcross and population cross) with sustainable seed systems, for both the hill and valley agro-ecosystems to extend to more productive agroecologies
– farmer-friendly IPM packages for the control and management of economically important weed, insect and disease pests focused on pearl millet and finger millet as priority
– enhancing intergrated resource management for soil-water-crop livestock systems in millet-based production systems
– continuing with more vigour the processing (primary, secondary and tertiary) and utilization methodologies; equipment and facilities development, fabrication and modification; and grain quality assessment with product quality and standards
– fostering interaction and networking for millets R4D and information access within and across regions and sub-regions
Components of the traditional
village ecosystem
Household
Market
Animal husbandry Forest
Agriculture
Extent of
Shifting Cultivation
Agroforestry-alternative to Jhum Comparison of jhum vs. agro-forestry
Economic factors
Systematic Intensive Labour
Used sometimesNot usedInorganic fertilizer
High Low Carrying capacity of land
Complex Complex Ecological status
Source: Arunachalam et al. 2002
Production sustainedDiversity conservedSustainability
Less More Local adaptability
Intervention Traditional valueCultural value
More than one rotationOne rotationCropping pattern
Trees grown with cropsSlashing & burning followed by cropping
Approaches to cultivation
Socio-cultural factor
High Low Monetary input-output
More Low Carbon sequestration
Low (restricted)High Biodiversity
External controlInternal Homeostasis
Low High Fragility
Ecological factors
Agroforestry JhumFactors
Biodiversity
Abiotic environmentHumans
Nature's propaganda in the biosphere
Managing the
interface is the
challenge?
Biosphere
HumansPlants
Animals
Microbes
Atmosphere
Land, Soil & Water
Interactions
Interventions
Disturbance
Degradation
Environmental linkages
Restoration
Conservation
Climate Change
• Impact & Vulnerability
• Coping strategies & Adaptation
• Research Gaps & Future action
Lush Green Jatropha cultivation
in NE India
Horticulture / Medicinal Plants
• : There is a lack of information, database and marketing linkage of some
• medicinal plants (records)
• : Still there is a illegal but large market • of these plants.• : Needs conservation through cultivation.
: A central market in co-operative basis • may be established with proper • information system.
• A need for biogeo database
Coping strategy
• Migration
• Change in choice of animals…!
• Network of PDS
• Change of cropping pattern
• Change of crop
• Responses to differential variation in climate/environment
• Cultural landscape approach…..!!!!
1. Emanates from the cultural contours of the community concerned
2. Evolves with close contact with specific environment and communities intimate knowledge of their environment
Constituents of IK
1. Production, transmission and utilization of IK & IT
2. Role in Nation Building (a). medicine & health, (b). food system, (c). arts, crafts & material, (d) . socio-cultural
3. Encompasses cross-cutting and supportive issues (IPR, national policy formulation and governance, integration of IKS with other knowledge systems
Traditional knowledge
Figure 1. Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge
Source: India Today, June 10, 2002
IPR
• Is it protecting the TEK???
KEY
• “We should not discard old technology (IKS) just because it is old”
- M. S. Swaminathan
• Poverty reduction is a key to reduce vulnerability to climate change…
Processes of succession in a jhum fallow after site abandonment
Primary forest
Slash & burn
Cultivation
& harvesting
Abandonment
Fallow
Secondary forest
regrowthNear original state?
Mixed bamboo forest
Grassland
Restoration!
• Acid test to ecologists
Natural process
Human directed
Rehabilitation of jhum lands
Terracing
Horticulture
Secondary forest
Jhum cultivation
Agroforestry
Market PricesDirect valuesGoods and products
Indirect values
Ecosystem services
Option values
Existence values
Direct valuesNature tourism
Effect on Production
Replacement Costs
Cost of Providing
Substitutes
Cost of Avoided
Damage
Productivity &
cost-based approaches
Travel Costs
Contingent Valuation
Surrogate market & stated
preference approaches
Ecological
EconomicSocial
Dimensions to Environmental Management…….
Humans
A SEE Approach…….!!!
Database
Documentation
Information
Inference
Collection
Methods
Analysis
To know
To understand
To forecast
Informatics - The Change in the Pathway…….
Survival ???..
or
Cultural Ethics - Ecopsychology
• Cultural values of millets
• Festivals…and rituals….
• Primary processing - patterns …..
• Sustenance-based?
• Traditional Ecological knowledge
• Gender Issues
The bottleneck
• Extent of awareness….sensitization of younger generation
• Ability to appreciate traditional foods with sensitivity
The Potential
• Promoting traditional foods for nature tourism…
• Fodder
Multiple Securities….
Promotion….
• Consultations…at different levels…
• Partnership mode….
• All India Coordinated Project
• Audio…Video…Success Stories….for sensitization….
• Policy measures….(e.g. integrating with mid-day meal programme or PDS….healthcare systems)
Policy
People
Politics
A PPP Process………
Environment
The need of the hour
• To have sensitization on this tradition as a means of livelihoods in the present day conditions to have progressive socio-economy of the farming communities in particular.
• ‘Good Cultivation and Collection Practices’
• ‘Good Manufacturing and Marketing Practices’
• Technological backstopping and Institutional linkages
Thanks
Let us save tradition, traditional cultivars and
work towards enhancing production and
economic returns to sustain livelihoods!