Millet lunch in the Parliament

Subject: Geography

To raise awareness on millets and prepare for 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with fellow parliamentarians across party lines, enjoyed a sumptuous lunch where millets were front and centre.

About International year of Millets:

India’s proposal to observe an International Year of Millets in 2023 was approved by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2018 and the United Nations General Assembly has declared the year 2023 as the International Year of Millets.
This was adopted by a United Nations Resolution for which India took the lead and was supported by over 72 nations.
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.

Government Initiatives to promote Millet production:

Millets are being promoted through technology dissemination, quality seeds through millet seed hubs, awareness generation, minimum support price and inclusion in PDS.
Efforts are now being done to include the nutrient-rich smaller millets in the mid-day meal schemes in government and government-aided schools in Karnataka and Telangana.
Millets as Nutricereals
The Union Agriculture Ministry, in April 2018, declared millets as “Nutri-Cereals”, considering their “high nutritive value” and also “anti-diabetic properties”.
Year of Millets
2018 was observed as the ‘National Year of Millets” and The UN General Assembly adopted an India-sponsored resolution to mark 2023 as the “International Year of Millets”.
Millet Mission
The Government of India’s Millet Mission comes under the National Food Security Mission (NFSM), launched in October 2007.
The Centre’s Millet Mission will focus on developing farm-gate processing and empowering farmers through collectives while focusing on value-addition and aggregation of the produce.

“Millet in Minutes” products:

Recently APEDA launched a variety of “Millet in Minutes” products under the category of Ready-to-Eat (RTE) such as Upma, Pongal, Khichadi, Noodles, Biryani, etc.
This is a breakthrough in the food sector as it’s the first RTE millet product in the market to cater fast-paced world at their convenience in a healthy way.
All the millet products launched by APEDA are gluten-free, 100% natural and patented. All the RTE products are vacuum processed without any additives, fillers and preservatives.
Nutrition value is retained as original with a shelf-life of 12 months in ambient temperature.
Initiative for Nutritional Security through Intensive Millet Promotion (INSIMP):
Government announced an allocation of Rs. 300 crores in 2011-12 under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana for promotion of millets as Nutri-cereals.
The scheme aimed to demonstrate the improved production and post-harvest technologies in an integrated manner with visible impact to catalyze increased production of millets in the country.
SCO Millet Festival
India proposed to organize Millet Food festival under Shanghai Cooperation Organization.