- can be grown on marginal lands
- highly nutritious
- need less water
- the fodder is good for cattle.
- ecologically safe due to absence of any use of chemicals during the production process
- the cost of cultivation when compared to paddy would be very low and economically viable
Further the millets have dietary fibre apart from being very nutritious. Hence could be advocated to all age groups. These grains will hence reduce the cost on health management. Therefore I found urgent need to popularize the production and consumption of millets. In this regard I received overwhelming support from Dr. Channabyregowda and as well Dr. Nagaraj. Today being the day of Buddha Poornima we took pledge to take initiatives to build the network on the lines of Rotary to popularize these millets on the global scale by creating opportunities of its availability using modern internet based business options.
We also discussed about a website exclusively for millets, a blog to share knowledge, to find networking opportunities which are already existing such as Knowledge Management Forum.
To conduct demonstrations etc.,
Have weekly/fortnightly/monthly meetings
Conduct melas, seminars, print literature for creating awareness etc.,
I also remain thankful for providing email id of Dinesh who is also working on millets in Andhra Pradesh.
At this juncture I leave open the topic to set our objectives:
Udayakumar Kollimath
Agriculture Marketing Specialist
JSYS, Bangalore