International Convention on Millets: Stakeholders Come Together for Best Practices on Millet

Bhubaneswar: Stakeholders from India and other countries came together to share best practices and learnings about the implementation of millet missions and programs here in a session.

Organised by Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment of the Government of Odisha on the eve of International Convention on Millets to celebrate International Year of Millets 2023, the session developed a roadmap for millets for coming decade.

The session was attended by representatives from the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment, millet ambassadors from various nations, Officials from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in India. Ms. Nozomi Hashimoto, Deputy Country Director of WFP in India and Shubha Thakur, Joint Secretary, GoI jointly chaired the session. The session was guided by Sri Prem Chandra Chaudhary, Director, Agriculture and Food Production, Odisha.

The participants shared their best practices and discussed how they can collaborate to promote millets. The participants emphasized the need for a platform that can engage different stakeholders, particularly those from India/Asia and Middle East. The discussion focused on exploring opportunities for international collaboration through policy dialogue and knowledge exchange among Indian states that have successful millet mainstreaming models. They also encouraged investment in strengthening and mainstreaming the millet value chain.