Tamil Nadu Delegation Visits Odisha Krushi Bhawan to Explore Collaboration on Millets

Bhubaneswar: A high level delegation from Tamil Nadu led by P Amudha, Principal Secretary, Rural Development & Panchayati Raj Department, Government of Tamil Nadu on Wednesday visited Krushi Bhawan, Bhubaneswar to explore different schemes being implemented through Women SHGs in Odisha.

The delegation interacted with Dr. Arabinda Kumar Padhee, Principal Secretary Agriculture & FE Department, Prem Chandra Chaudhary, Director of Agriculture &FP, Mansi Nimbhal, CEO-OLM and other representatives from Mission Shakti Deptt and Odisha Millets Mission.

Dr. Padhee shared about the different aspects of Odisha Millets Mission (OMM) especially its fork to farm approach and focus on rural consumption of millets. He shared about excellent results in promotion of local landraces and traditional recipes through Women SHGs. He stressed that involvement of Women SHGs, FPOs, NGOs along with Departmental staff played an important role in the success of the OMM. Odisha is also promoting seed systems for landraces through participatory varietal trials. Many local landraces have shown excellent results in their natural landscape, sometimes even giving better yield than notified varieties. In addition to PDS, millets are also being included in DMF districts of Keonjhar and Sundergarh in ICDS and MDM. As there is no MSP for non ragi minor millets such as little millet and foxtail millet, Odisha is currently in process of arriving at benchmark price for these millets with support of OUAT.

Prem Choudhury shared that OMM started in 7 districts covering 30 blocks and is now expanded to 177 blocks covering 30 districts of the state. Over a period of 5 yrs, average yields have nearly doubled and value of produce from millets has nearly tripled. OMM is now trying to achieve the scale through promotion of Millet Service Centre, an end to end one stop solution from seeds to packaging , to be operated by block level FPOs/WSHG Federations. Government of Odisha has allocated nearly Rs 2808 Cr for next 5 years for Odisha Millets Mission.

Mansi Nimbhal, CEO, OLM shared that Mission Shakti WSHGs played a very important role in mainstreaming of millets through processing and value addition.

Focus on household consumption with grassroot level entrepreneurship around Tiffin Centres and Threshers are helping in the mainstreaming of millets. Ragi has been procured and distributed under PDS since 2018 under OMM. Due to high demand, TDCCOL is now planning to procure non ragi millets such as Little Millet and Foxtail millets.

Dr P Amudha, Principal Secretary, RD&PR Deptt, Govt of Tamil Nadu appreciated the OMM model and shared that there are many lessons for the state of Tamil Nadu. She suggested that a technical team from Tamil nadu will visit Odisha to understand the model in more detail. She has also offered support in supply of quality seeds for promotion of non ragi millets in Odisha such as little millet, barnyard millet, etc.

Dr Arabinda readily agreed for collaboration on quality seed supply and informed that a technical team from the Agriculture & FE Deptt will visit Tamil nadu. He presented the Millet Gift Hampers along with a coffee table book and millet calendars to the members of the delegation.

After interaction with department officials, the delegation visited Millets Shakti Outlet at Krushi Bhawan after the meeting, and interacted with WSHG members on different millets-based ready-to-eat & ready-to-cook products being sold in the outlet. The delegation appreciated the efforts of WSHG members for managing the outlet, and promoting millets based recipes and products among different age groups.