4 months ago
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A three-day festival to highlight the diversity of millets will be held from December 19th to 21st in Mysuru as part of the International Year of Millets 2023.
The festival has been organised by Sahaja Samrudha in association with Department of Agriculture, SWISSAID, FiBl, under the CROPS4HD (Consumption of Resilient Orphan Crops for Healthier Diets) Project.
The Siridhanya Sambhrama, as it is called, will be held at Nanjaraja Bahadur choultry and the organisers said that it is a celebration of crop that is not only underutilised but is almost forgotten and receives less attention.
The objective of the festival is to raise awareness and direct policy attention to the nutritional and health benefits of millets and perpetuate activity beyond the International Year of Millets.
Krishnaprasad of Sahaja Samrudha, an organisation promoting millets besides conservation of indigenous varieties of paddy, said that Karnataka is not only home to a variety of millets, but has a culture that is strongly associated with it and constitutes the cornerstone of local food culture with ragi in the south and jowar in the northern parts of the state.
The three-day millet festival will display scores of varieties of traditional millets, and dryland treasured crops of pulses, greens, and vegetables and will underline the seed diversity and food products, and provide opportunities to interact with seed savers from different regions.
The festival highlights the conservation of indigenous seeds and facilitate the exchange of seeds, experiences, and knowledge on millet farming practices, said Mr. Krishnaprasad.
The festival will also help create awareness on the importance of conserving indigenous seeds by farmers and the benefits of local varieties and their role in the revival of agricultural diversity, he added.
Some of the rare varieties to be on display include the black and red foxtail millet, red jowar, milky, and black little millet to name a few.
Besides, 73 varieties of Ragi seeds from Kanakapura region and varieties of ragis from various sanghas and self-help groups will also be on display. Bibi Fatima Group will showcase Sorghum, Little millet, Foxtail millet, and different vegetable seeds. More than 30 seed-saver groups, from across the state, will take part in the festival and explain to fellow farmers how to treat and store the seeds.
Sahaja Samrudha said it was working on local food systems and women from all over Karnataka and many of them will be in the festival running live kitchens to provide the local, authentic millet foods for the pubic to savour.
There will be Parallel Sessions during the festival with talks by experts in the field of millet production, millet seed saving, millet processing, millet byproducts, millet value addition etc.
