Seed festival seeks to spread millet cultivation

Seeking to popularise millet cultivation and create awareness of the benefits of the fibre-rich nutritious cereal crops, ‘Pasumai Vikatan’ and Dharani Agro Research and Rural Empowerment (DARE) Foundation have jointly organised a seed festival and distributed free seeds to farmers.

More than 300 farmers from various districts of the State participated in the festival held at an integrated farm at Ettivayal, developed by Dharani Murugesan, a progressive farmer and founder of DARE Foundation. Addressing the festival, Collector S. Natarajan exhorted the farmers to go back to millet cultivation, which was not only cost-effective but was ideally suited for arid districts like Ramanathapuram.

The cereal crops consumed less water and required no fertilisation, he said.

Pointing out that the farmers had almost given up millet cultivation and totally resorted to paddy cultivation, he said farmers could evince interest in raising minor millets, which were rich in dietary fibre and nutritious.

Of late, millets had emerged as the highly preferred stable food by health-conscious people, he said.

He said the agriculture department had a stock of about 6,000 kg of millets, including sorgam (cholam), samai (little millet), varagu (kodo millet) and kudiraivali (banyard millet) in the district, and the farmers could get the seeds and take up millet cultivation.

The climatic and soil conditions would help the farmers in reaping a good harvest.

Presently, millets were cultivated only on about 6,500 hectares of the 1.98 lakh hectares of cultivable land in the district, the Collector said.

Mr. Dharani Murugesan distributed 3.5 tonnes of seeds of millets to the farmers free of cost at the festival. He also proposed to distribute seeds of at least half a dozen traditional paddy varieties such as ‘Seeraga samba’, ‘Mappillai samba’ ‘Mysore malli’ and ‘Author kichadi’.

V. Meenakshi, Assistant Professor at Home Science College and Research Institute in Madurai, a constituent college of Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, informed the farmers of de-huller and de-stoning facilities available in all the districts to market quality millets.

Nirmala Kumari from ‘Millets Magathuva Maiyam’ and V.S. Vellaichamy, PA to Collector (Agriculture), explained the cultivation process of millets and the benefits of value addition.

Source : The Hindu