India estimated to produce 205L tonne millet in 2022-23: Min

NEW DELHI: India is estimated to grow 205 lakh tonne nutri cereals during the year 2022-23, Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti informed Lok Sabha earlier this week. The Government has planned to increase millet production.

For increasing the production of nutri cereals under National Food Security Mission (NFSM) program, the NFSM-Nutri Cereals is being implemented in 212 districts of 14 states, the minister informed the parliament in a written reply.

Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh are some of the major growers of nutri cereals. "Under NFSM, assistance is given through state governments to farmers for interventions like cluster demonstrations on improved package of practices, demonstrations on cropping system, distribution of seeds of High Yielding Varieties (HYVs)/hybrids, improved farm machineries/resource conservation machineries/tools, efficient water application tools, plant protection measures, nutrient management/soil ameliorants, processing & postharvest equipments, cropping system based trainings to the farmers etc," the minister added.

Notably, the United Nations has declared the year 2023 as the International Year of Millet (IYOM).

The government of India notified millet as a nutritious- cereal in April 2018 and millet has also been included in the Poshan Mission campaign.

During the last 5 years, our country produced more than 13.71 to 18 million tonnes of millet with the highest production in 2020-21.