Relevance:
India has shared the vision to make International Year of Millets 2023 a ‘People’s Movement’ alongside positioning India as the ‘Global Hub for Millets’.
About International Year of Millets:
- Proposed by – India
- Approved by – Food and Agriculture Organisation (2018)
- Declared by – United Nations General Assembly
- Objectives –
- Awareness of the contribution of millet to Food Security and nutrition.
- Inspire stakeholders to improve sustainable production and quality of millets.
- Focus on enhanced investment in research and development and extension services to achieve the other two aims.
About Millet:
- Millet is a collective term referring to a number of small-seeded annual grasses that are cultivated as grain crops.
- Areas of cultivation – Dry areas in temperate, subtropical and tropical regions
- Common millets in India – Ragi (Finger millet), Jowar (Sorghum), Sama (Little millet), Bajra (Pearl millet), and Variga (Proso millet).
- Earliest evidence – Indus Valley Civilization.
- India accounts for 20 % of global production and 80% of Asia’s production.
- Largest producers – India, Nigeria and China
- Importance –
- Nutritionally Superior owing to their high protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals like iron, calcium and magnesium.
- Ragi is known to have the highest calcium content among all the food grains.
- High iron content can fight high prevalence of anaemia.
- Gluten-free helps in tackling obesity, diabetes etc.
- Have a low glycemic index (a relative ranking of carbohydrate in foods according to how they affect blood glucose levels).
- Millets are Photo-insensitive (do not require a specific photoperiod for flowering) and less water consuming.
- Millets have low carbon and water footprint.
With reference to ‘Initiative for Nutritional Security through Intensive Millets Promotion’, which of the following statements is/are correct? (2016)
- This initiative aims to demonstrate the improved production and post-harvest technologies, and to demonstrate value addition techniques, in an integrated manner, with a cluster approach.
- Poor, small, marginal and tribal farmers have a larger stake in this scheme.
- An important objective of the scheme is to encourage farmers of commercial crops to shift to millet cultivation by offering them free kits of critical inputs of nutrients and micro irrigation equipment.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
- 1 only
- 2 and 3 only
- 1 and 2 only
- 1, 2 and 3
Reference: Indian Express
