Thriving with a caveat

As the world’s urban consumer becomes more and more health conscious and looks for organic, gluten-free, low-calorie, yet rich in protein foods, millets—pushed to oblivion as ‘inferior and coarse grains’ by the green revolution and food security programmes—surge to occupy the dinner plate. As their popularity grows and exports become conspicuous, food corporations race to capture the markets and push world bodies and governments to draw policy frameworks in that direction. On December 6, 2022, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations declared 2023 as the International Year of Millet (IYM 2023) at the behest of India’s enthusiastic proposal. With the UN declaration, many civil society organisations in India that have been working for decades with tribes, marginal farmers, and organic farmers, are upbeat.

Millet food fairs, growers’ symposia, and other promotional activities spur consumption across the nation. Concerns should have arisen over whether IYM 2023 would lead multinationals to capture and monopolise IPR on millet agricultural inputs and markets, snatching the staple food plate from the poor to give it to urban, elite consumers as ‘super food.’ Or, has it already happened? An FAO research paper titled ‘Which farms feed the world and has farmland become more concentrated?’ (2021) takes an analogous position and changes the definition of ‘family farmer’ previously adopted by the UN. The paper assesses that the world’s small farms only produce 35 per cent of the world’s food while using only 12 per cent of agricultural land. It also suggests that policymakers should give greater attention to larger production units than to peasant production. In contrast, some organisations of repute estimate that the world’s peasant farms nourish at least 50 per cent of the world’s population with less than one third of the agricultural land and resources. These deliberate positional changes clearly imply favouring large agribusinesses. The Indian experience has been unambiguous. The three controversial farm laws, which bore no pressing concern for farmers but aimed to hasten the corporatisation of agriculture, were brought through ordinances when many democratic rights were nearly suspended during the pandemic lockdowns. They were made into Acts overnight, with hardly any room for debate in the Parliament.

The resistance of the farmers who picketed on Delhi’s borders for over a year opposing the Acts was looked upon as ‘regressive’ and ‘anti-national’. The farmers’ resolve could only get the laws repealed, though it has been hard so far to believe that the laws are gone forever. What prompts us Indians to hold such apprehensions? The timing of India’s proposal and the UN declaration seems curious, if not incredible, when we look at their engagement with respect to food and agriculture in the past decade. India’s Seeds Act 2009 defined a ‘farmer’ as any person who cultivates crops either by cultivating the land himself or through any other person, but does not include any individual, company, trader, or dealer who engages in the procurement and sale of seeds on a commercial basis.

The Draft Seed Bill 2019 shuns this definition and says that ‘farmer’ means any person who owns cultivable land, or any other category of farmers who are doing agricultural work as may be notified by the central and state governments. This was after India set up the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Mumbai in 2018 to work on policy formulations with Niti Aayog, the partnership that formulated the INDIA@75 document, which included the three controversial farm laws. However rhetorical it may sound, it’s time Indian farmers return to sustainability and reclaim sovereignty from the clutches of food politics and food businesses. The governments must sincerely support them in that direction if they want to address the degradation of soil, promote prudent natural resource management, achieve food and nutritional security for the vulnerable, and combat global warming. The NGOs need to put their will into sensitising the growers about the importance of agricultural and food sovereignty. More importantly, they should work towards insulating millet seed varieties and traditional knowledge from detrimental policies and interventions.

As a nation, are we ready yet for such a paradigm shift? The procurement of ragi (finger millet) in Karnataka was drastically cut from 3 lakh MT in 2021 to 2.25 lakh MT in 2022, but religious polarisation surged unhindered. The Adivasis in the northern and north-eastern states are being pushed to lose their millet lands to big-time mining and other unsustainable developmental activities, lest they face arrests under UAPA and languish in jails without trial for years. In Punjab alone, over three lakh small farmer families have quit agriculture in the past decade to work either as agricultural or urban wage workers. The instances of pressure on traditional food providers are increasing. Millets are humble food grains that are climate resilient and yield with sporadic rainfall sans manure, pesticide, or scientific intervention. Millet seeds have survived the world over in the repositories of innumerable indigenous and ecosystem communities, in spite of the State’s neglect. They have remained the epitome of collectivism and have fed communities and societies for centuries. The world desires that they remain and flourish without falling prey to capitalistic greed. In spite of such unilateral actions, what motivates India now to promote millets, a move that appears to be a U-turn from its pro-corporate slant to one that is pro-smallholder and poor consumer? When India suggested to the UN in 2017 that 2018 be observed as the International Year of Millet, the then Union Agriculture Minister stated that the promotion of production and consumption of millets at the global level was likely to contribute substantially to the fight against targeted hunger and would mitigate the effects of climate change in the long run. He also added that millets’ increased production can have multiple untapped uses, such as food, animal feed, biofuels, and brewing.

The People’s Convention on Millets for Millions held in Delhi in February 2023, was attended by millet growers from across India, civil society organisations, researchers, and government representatives. The attendees recommended many policy interventions to promote millets as the nation’s mainstream staple diet. The Union Agricultural Secretary even assured that they would work to decentralise food security by combining traditional knowledge on millets with the scientific knowledge of the universities’, a departure from the hitherto centralised approach.

Views expressed are personal