About three years ago, while reviewing crop production and cultivation, Karnataka’s Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda realised that figures were shrinking hugely for the state’s traditional crops — the millets ragi in the south and jola in the north.“Ragi and jola cultivation is the basic identity of the Karnataka farmer. It rattled me to see the drastic shrinkage in the acreage under millet production,” Gowda, who himself grew ragi till 2008 in his ancestral fields in the dry Kolar district, told ET Magazine.Ragi (finger millet), the staple diet food of southern Karnataka popularised by former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda , was down from 7.88 lakh hectares in 2010-11 to 6.46 lakh hectares in 2012-13. Production plunged from 14.99 lakh tonnes in 2010-11 to 8.58 lakh tonnes in 2012-13. The scenario was similar with jola (sorghum), the staple of northern Karnataka. Currently, the state has about 73 lakh hectares under cultivation in the kharif crop, 33 lakh in rabi of which hardly 18.09 lakh hectares from both seasons are covered by millets.“The millet crops, which we call siridhaanya, require minimum water, minimum inputs. They provide maximum nutrition. They are actually the best option. Farmers, however, are growing high-yielding varieties of maize wheat and paddy, as they get better returns from the market, while more and more people are eating only those. This has resulted in a decline in the production of our traditional foods,” Gowda said.The situation spurred him to brainstorm with the officials of the agriculture department on programmes specifically aimed at pushing the humble millet into the urban and also the national market. “People eat oats and quinoa, spend huge amounts in the name of eating fibre. We have locally-grown, cheaper and better nutritional options, why not push those,” he asked.The programme objective was multi-pronged: familiarise the urban population with the health benefits of eating millets; create products that the urbanite eats like pizzas, burgers, pastas and desserts from millets; research on how to improve the seed quality of millets so that they yield more per acre and expand the market for the millet farmer, making it more profitable to grow them.With Karnataka going through continuous drought for the last three years and the monsoons appearing chancy this year also, farmers’ representatives also feel that the push for millets is a good thing. There are 14 organic and millet farmers’ regional federations in the state, which are promoting a back-to-the-old-ways culture and methodology to deal with the drastic water shortage.“We have to change our crop patterns, go for our traditional crops like ragi and all the minor millets, which grow with much lesser water,” farmer leader Kodihalli Chandrashekar told ET Magazine. “The problem is that these crops do not fetch us market returns. If the marketing is pushed and we get Rs5,000 per quintal for our crop, that is when we can grow ragi and manage our livelihood, too.”The minimum support price that the Centre and state have jointly announced for ragi and jola this year is Rs1,650 and Rs1,600 per quintal, respectively, way below the demand of Rs5,000. ¡§It is not remunerative,¡¨ Gowda admitted,¡¨ even I, as a farmer, saw some profit only when we started growing banana and other such crops.The point about the market being developed comes after this. Karnataka, however, is slowly pushing forward the millet promotion programme in the hope that it will slowly boost the market to the extent that the demand and supply equations will give the farmers sufficient income, leading to increased production.¡¥It is certainly difficult to convince a paddy or sugarcane grower to shift to millets,¡¨ Kodihalli Chandrashekar admitted. ¡§While nature and water shortage might push them to it finally, that situation has not yet happened. Farmers are currently growing ragi only because it gives good fodder for the cattle as a side product. So unless the market situation changes, increasing the area under ragi cultivation is not feasible,¡¨ he added.Awareness about the health benefits of various millets is slowly growing in the urban areas, even as the agriculture department has held about 50 millet melas in Bengaluru and the other 29 district headquarters in the state to push it. They are putting out nutritional charts and explaining the importance of eating millets rather than just rice and wheat.Besides this, all kinds of products are being developed, from millet idlis and dosas, to snacks like chaklis, kurkure, cookies, desserts, pastries, pastas and so on. All of these are on display along with shops set up by manufacturers. Products like ragi dosas are made at the melas and sold to consumers, who are now coming in large numbers, Gowda said.The department has held millet awareness programmes for chefs of top hotels including five stars. The private sector, however, has already boomed on its own, with several exclusive millet serving restaurants and hotels coming up in Bengaluru. We have different, modern recipes. We serve millet pizzas, millet ice creams, burgers, breads and it has become extremely popular,¡¨ says HR Jayaram of Forgotten Food restaurant. His recipes use navane ((foxtail millet), sajje (pearl millet) arka (kodo millet), oodhalu (barnyard millet) baragu (porso millet) along with ragi.It used to be the poor man¡¦s food, but now it has become a superfood, the toast of the rich man,¨ says chef Ramaswamy Selvaraju at Taj Vivanta, who has developed 222 millet-based food recipes in his kitchen. People come and ask us for millet-based breakfasts. We have developed ragi and navane based pancakes, muffins. We¡¦ve used saame (little millet) in salads and it has been an amazing success. Add a little lemon juice and olive oil and it is a huge hit. We have even made brownies and cookies¡K people's habits are changing, they want to experiment with food, he said.For a Balanced Diet While organic and millet shops are mushrooming across the city, the problem of a lack of assured production of millets remains. To tackle the essential problem of low yield per acre, the agriculture department has set up a consortium comprising ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) from Hyderabad, National Centre for Biological Sciences and the four agricultural universities in the state to work on genome based marker assisted breeding for better varieties of ragi, jola, tur, bengal gram and groundnut.We will expand our millet promotion drive to include pulses, amaranth leaves and also the Mexican food of chia seeds, to take forward the concept of balanced diet and better health. This programme is good for the consumer, good for the environment as millets have the lowest ecological footprint and are sustainable. It is also best option for the farmers to grow due to the low input costs, Gowda said.The state is pondering introducing millets in a big way in governmental programmes like the ICDS (Integrated Child Development Programme) that tackles malnutrition in children. Discussions are on with the women and child development department for the same.Ragi and jola are already being supplied through the public distribution system , though there are hitches due to the patchy production the millets. There is also a plan to push millets into the highly subsidised 198 Indira Canteenus planned for Bengaluru, though this again is dependent on increased production.The state's millet moves, though, have been making waves and seem to have caught the attention of neighbouring Tamil Nadu, also a major millet growing state. Tamil Nadu has now planned a Millet Summit in Chennai on April 21.Karnataka is going a step further and planned a National Trade Fair on organics and millets between April 28 and 30 in Bengaluru, where farmers, producers, exporters, domestic trading companies, food caterers, restaurants, supermarkets and speciality chain stores are expected to participate in huge numbers."It is inevitable that millets are the food of the future,¨ chef Selvaraju pointed out. "They are fat-free, cholesterol-free and very tasty. What else do we need?¨