India must become Global hub of Millets: Piyush Goyal
06 December 2022, New Delhi: The year 2023 declared as the International Year of Millets (IYoM) by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will provide a huge opportunity for domestic farmers and exporters to popularize and expand India millets as well as its value-added products across the global markets.
“The Indian industry should take India’s millets story global, approach newer markets, make them organic and sustainable, reduce the packaging size and see if they can be Geographical Indication (GI) tagged. India produces 20% of the global production at 16 million tones which is barely 5% of India’s production,” said Mr. Piyush Goyal, Union Minister for Commerce & Industry, consumer affairs, food, and public distribution and textiles while inaugurating a day-long conclave ‘Millets-smart Nutritive Food’ a pre-launch event of the ‘International Year of Millets – 2023’ (IYoM-2023).
“Millets will help resolve the global problem of malnutrition and take affordable food to parts of the world faced with food security issues. Besides being healthy, he said, they use less carbon to be produced, can also be intermittent produce and millet hay works as fodder for animals. Union Ministry of Commerce & Industry through its apex agricultural export promotion body Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) is all set to promote the export of Indian millet worldwide. The millets export promotion program also comes at the backdrop of the proposal of India that was supported by 70 countries which lead to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declaring 2023 as the International Year of Millets (IYoM)“, said Mr. Piyush Goyal.
“About 250 startups are being supported where the Indian Institute of Millets Research is incubating startups on millets. The Indian Institute of Packaging could be roped in to innovate and improve the packaging of millets and millet products”, said Mr. Goyal.
“APEDA has done remarkable work to promote Indian millets worldwide and its efforts to further promote Indian millets will help to link India with international markets” he added.
“There is a huge export potential of millet, currently, Indian exports are $15 million but we are targeting $100 million in exports from the country. We can easily reach this target in 2-3 years…Value addition is about 5-10 times. The government has identified 16 international fairs where India’s millet producers would participate”, said Mr. Sunil Bhartwal, Secretary, Union Ministry of Commerce & Industry speaking on the occasion.
“Millets have been part of our food culture for ages, it is a traditional crop and a low-carbon food. It will soon become the food of the future due to its nutritional value. It is suited to low and marginal farmers with low inputs. The Ministry of Agriculture is trying to generate awareness about this staple food and make availability of millets easily across the country as well as make it more affordable”, said Mr. Manoj Ahuja, Secretary, of the Ministry and farmers welfare.
“The day-long conclave ‘Millets -The smart Nutritive food’ a curtain raiser to the forthcoming International Year of Millets (IYoM) – 2023 declared by the United Nations has as been organized to provide a platform for Business to Business(B2B) and Business to Government(B2G) meetings between International and National organizations, Exporter and start-ups to explore direct marketing and opportunities in Millets”, said Mr. M Angamuthu, Chairman, of the Agriculture and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA).
“The major highlights of the event was an exhibition of various Millet-based value-added products, a B2B meeting followed by a Conference. Around 35 overseas companies from different countries participated. Exporters’ startups, FPOs, and officials from Central and State Government Departments also participated in the event”, said Mr. Angamuthu.
“To promote Millets globally APEDA plans to take an Indian delegation of exporters, start-ups, and farmer-producer organizations (FPOs) to 17 major international events for the promotion of millets and its value-added products during 2023, which has been declared by the United Nations as International Year of Millets. This is a good opportunity to boost our exports as India has very distinctive traditional varieties of millets which are loved by health-conscious people. However, a lot of promotion is required for increasing shipments of value-added millet products”, APEDA Chairman M Angamuthu added.
The major highlight of the conclave was an exhibition of Millet products organized by Trident Exhibitors on behalf of APEDA.
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