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

foreword vii
Foreword
I extend my congratulations to the authors and contributors of this publication that
documents the results of the IFAD funded project “Enhancing the Contribution
of Nutritious but Neglected Crops to Food Security and to Incomes of the Rural
Poor: Asia Component-Nutritious Millets” that was implemented from 2002-2004.
The project was coordinated at international level by Bioversity International (then
known as IPGRI) and for South Asia by M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation
(MSSRF). This publication summarizes the successful implementation and results
of the project in India and Nepal.
The results of the project highlight the importance looking at the entire value
chain of millets from production to value addition and marketing. This is essential
if we are to achieve a sustainable enhancement of the economic conditions of
householders through reduction of drudgery, increased employment, as well as
their improved food and nutrition security. The development of efficient processing
technologies for the target crops and making them available to communities helped
make these underutilized millets commercially more profitable to farmers and other
value chain actors while at the same time boosting peoples’ ability to diversify the
portfolio of their locally made products. Development of capacities of farmers and
their families on the different aspects of millet production, processing, utilization;
marketing and allied subjects were another important activity of this project. Public
awareness complemented these efforts to publicize the strategic nutritional value
of these crops targeting both producers and the general public, including policy
makers. This farm-to-fork approach involving interventions along the entire value
chain of millets proved to be very successful in re-invigorating peoples’ interest in
underutilized and neglected crops such as those addressed by the project. Moreover,
the inter-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder, gender and cultural sensitive participatory
approach used in implementing the project helped in ensuring the success of the
project.
This publication is an important resource for developing strategies and programmes
that aim to tackle the difficult issues of poverty, food and nutrition security through
mobilization and better use of existing and indigenous farm resources. Our hope
is that the findings described in this publication will gain greater attention from
decision makers to allow their scaling up and contribute to the greater sustainable
conservation and use of minor millets and other similar crops.
The Asia-Pacific region is the centre of diversity of many important food
crops, including those that are now considered neglected and underutilized. These
indigenous fruit trees, cereals, and vegetables are historically the sources of food
and nutrition of the people in the region but have recently become neglected and
underutilized partly because of the strong policy focus towards a limited number
of crops as the main components of food security. This bias has been aggravated