Millet Farming and Tribal Livelihood: An Analysis of Odisha Millet Mission in Koraput District, Odisha, India

1. Introduction

The focus of the policy makers, government and economist are now shifting to modifying the agriculture system towards, highly nutritious, climate smart crops that can be grow with most extreme climatic condition, low water requirement, less requirement of chemical fertilizer etc. Such kind of crops and cereals help the countries especially less developed countries to deal with hunger, malnutrition and scarcity of food in affordable price. One of such climate smart crop is millet. Millet is one of the oldest cultivated crops which provide food for human consumption, animal food along with its nutritional and health benefits. It is also a pro-environment crop which can grow and sustain with extreme environmental condition, low water requirements and less requirements of soil fertility, nutrients and moisture. Millet is a comprehensive term used for indicating a wide variety of small-seeded grasses that are mainly cultivated on hilly lands on dry and temperate areas under tropical and sub-tropical regions. India is the largest producer of different varieties of millets. There are different varieties of millet crops grown in India namely Sorghum (Great millet), Ragi (Finger millet), Bajra (Pearl millet), and small millets viz., Korra (Foxtail millet), Little millet, Proso millet, Barnyard milletKodo millet.But recently the contribution of millets in total foodgrain production of India reduced from 22.17% to 6.94% over the last six decades from 1950-51 to 2011-12 due to globalization, urbanization and rising income and standard of living etc. Millet is traditionally serving as one of the sole cultivated crops among the tribal dominated and non-affluent societies for various food andbeverages. Most of the tribal people consumed millet in their daily diet twice or thrice per day for their food, nutrition and water needs. Millets are rich in nutritional values with non-glutinous and not acid forming properties. Hence it is very soothing and light on the palate which makes iteasy to digest grains available (Michaelraj & Shanmugam, 2013). Millets are rich in various nutrients like iron, potassium magnesium, phosphorous and what not. Finger millet is the richest source in case of calcium content compared to 10 times of rice or wheat which has great potential to improve tribal livelihood, nutritional need. Long ago, India is the second largest producer of various kinds of millet but recently there is remarkable reduction in the area, production and productivity of millet due to urban life style, changing food habits, distribution of cheap rice and wheat through public distribution system etc. Millet is one of the pro-poor and pro-nutrition crops that is not only climate smart in nature but also deeply related to rural and tribal life. But in the recent past the area, production and productivity decreased due to green revolution which focused on the production of rice and wheat, distribution of cheap rice and wheat through the fair price shop etc. Hence, to increase the production, consumption and improve supply chain of millet Government of Odisha has introduced Odisha Millet Mission to revive and promote millet.