Millets Intervention Efficacy

Recognizing the benefits of millets for healthy diets and climate resilience, some NGOs have identified districts - Mandla and Balaghat in Madhya Pradesh for piloting interventions to increase millet production. These interventions range from improved seed varieties, local farmer collectives and entrepreneurs, and processing technologies to reduce drudgery and produce high-quality millets for the market.
 
NCCI is currently evaluating these pilot interventions. The evaluation aims to provide evidence for assessing the interventions and enabling scale-up to other locations. Fundamental principles for the assessment are:

1. Robustness in the statistical analysis of adoption rates, farmers’ perceptions, and impacts on food habits.
2. Objective assessment of the interventions.
3. Ability to interact with NGOs to learn from the evaluation and modify accordingly.

To facilitate this evaluation, we surveyed around ninety villages across four clusters (Bichhiya, Mukki, Nainpur, and Narayanganj) in the Mandla and the Balaghat districts of Madhya Pradesh. The baseline surveys were done in March 2023 (map below).