Minor millets in South Asia: learnings from IFAD-NUS project in India ...

166 minor millets in south asia
them to establish a maintenance
fund. These community groups
were able to successfully run
these mills and therefore provided
good services to the members of
the community at cheaper price.
However, after the project support
was over, it was reported that these
micro-mills were not functioning
well. Since these were smaller
capacity mills, it was not possible
to generate enough income even
to support their maintenance and
operation and hence was not cost
effective. The results thus indicated
the need for providing bigger mills
to establish community processing
units to meet the needs of the
communities at Kaski site.
Fig. 8. Community operated micro-mill used in villages
In addition, a farmers’ group of
Kalabang village started millet grain collection and marketing. They used their own
micro-mill and marketed the grain in 1 kg packets under the brand name ‘POWER’
in Pokhara city. Initially, these groups experienced some difficulties in running the
mills effectively due to lack of technical knowhow for operation and maintenance
of the micro-mill. But, after receiving practical training on mill operation in each
site, they gained full confidence in the milling operations as well as on how to carry
out minor repairs and maintenance of the equipment.
8.2. Development of value added products
In the past, there was no research on market based production and development in
finger millet. It was primarily due to the fact that finger millet food was considered
as low status food in Nepalese society. Hence, none of the entrepreneurs was
interested to produce millet recipes targeting the consumers. Through the concerted
efforts under the project, few entrepreneurs were identified who were innovative
and interested to work in partnership for developing millet based products targeting
particularly young consumers in Pokhara area. This process-led approach passed
through many steps (Fig. 9).
The product development efforts were successful and resulted in the development
of several new consumer preferred millet based products (Fig. 10) such as bread,
noodles, namkin, malt, and other bakery items like rolls, cookies, cakes. Among these,
Annapurna Bakery and Sital Agro-Products commercially produced and promoted
cookies, bread, namkin and roasted millet malt that gained popularity in urban