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

promoting nutrious millets in tamil nadu and orissa 35
of the rice of these millets is
getting wider recognition for
being valued as important
health food. Similarly, the
malt is a nutritious beverage
for people of all ages and
in particular valuable as
important weaning food.
The cost:benefit study led
to the conclusion that, on
average, value addition of
one ton of nutritious millet
offered income ranging
from INR 1,050 for finger
Fig. 19. Cost-benefit analysis of valu added millet products
millet flour to INR 19,250,
for finger millet malt (Fig. 19). Moreover, value addition also generated additional
employment, particularly for women, to the tune of 40 - 300 man-days from every
ton of value added grain, depending on the products (Table 5).
6.5. Establishment and promotion of local entrepreneurs within the
community
The experience gained in value addition, market demand driven product development,
their commercial production with fairly consistent quality and its marketing
encouraged the members of the SHGs and farm families to slowly bring out the
entrepreneurial strength present in some of them. The project staff oversaw these
changes and promoted the process with various specialized trainings on product
development, quality management, product packaging, labeling, marketing, and
management of accounts and finance. The slow change to increased confidence for
up-scaling the processing to a semi-commercial venture and establishing a network
of market outlets through regular production, delivery, consistency in product quality
and product presentation (Fig. 17). Finger millet malt, and polished rice of little and
Italian millet emerged as promising products with increasing demand from urban
areas. At the end of this project phase, the scale of operation constrained with capital
was low and the market reach of SHGs was limited. Although the production and
marketing of promising products had expansion potential, the major constraints
were finance as these SHG members belonged to poor farm families, need for more
marketing expertise and the difficulty of these women to spare full time because
of their responsibilities on attending household chores, participating in household
and wage earning seasonal farm operations, and role in socio-cultural events such
as community events, local festivals and periodic migration away from villages.
Therefore, promotion of entrepreneurship among women within such community is
not easy, though not impossible in the course of time. It may be possible to identify