The word ‘millets’ constitute a group of small grained cereals which are native to India, but have seen an alarming rate of decrease in their cultivation and consumption owing to the Green revolution. Between 1966 and 2006, 44% of millet cultivation areas were occupied by other crops signifying an extraordinary loss to India’s food and farming systems. Millets today remain our hope towards a sustainable and nutrition secure future, making it imperative to understand more about them.

Climate change portends less rain, more heat, reduced water availability and increased malnutrition. If there is any cropping system that can withstand these challenges, survive and flourish, it is the millet system. Millets are ecological crops, grown on less fertile and rain-fed soils with very low inputs of the regular water consumption, fertilizers and pesticides as compared to commodity crops currently promoted by policy measures, such as sugarcane and banana. Most millet farmers therefore use farmyard manures and in recent times, self-produced biofertilizers.