LAST MILE EFFECTIVENESS
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.
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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:
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Robustness in the statistical analysis of adoption rates, farmers’ perceptions, and impacts on food habits.
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Objective assessment of the interventions.
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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 .
AGROBIODIVERSITY ROUNDTABLE
Participants at the fifth Central India Landscape Symposium, held in February 2023 agreed to establish a roundtable discussion on agro-biodiversity initiatives for the landscape around Kanha Tiger Reserve, focusing on millets. The central India landscape is one of the strongholds of traditional millet production in the country, but production and consumption has declined over the last few decades. With renewed recognition of the climate resilience and nutrition benefits of millets, market demand is now increasing. The International Year of Millets 2023 and other global and national target-setting initiatives add to the need for diverse actors to share information and coordinate interventions to promote millets in the landscape. The Agro-biodiversity roundtable aims to facilitate such discussions.
In keeping with NCCI’s vision to maintain the ‘Jugalbandi’ of people and nature in the Central Indian Landscape, the roundtable’s goal is to link knowledge with action for effective efforts that reap the benefits of millets for healthy diets and climate resilience. The roundtable provides a platform to share information and coordinate efforts among the various actors promoting millets in the landscape.