Magical Hands of a Tribal Farmer Set a Milestone in Finger Millet Cultivation-A Case from Koraput, Odisha, India

Volume 2 - Issue 4

Prashant K Parida*, Neeranjan Gauda, Jeeva R and Kartik Charan Lenka

• Senior Scientist in M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, India

Received: February 03, 2020;   Published: February 12, 2020

*Corresponding author: Prashant K Parida, Senior Scientist in M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, India

DOI: 10.32474/SJFN.2020.02.000144

 

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Abstract

The nutritious millets traditionally occupied substantial part of the diets and cropping systems in tribal areas of Odisha. Millets require less water and are more resilient to climate vulnerability. They can also be cultivated on the undulating terrain. Reduction in millets resulted in nutrition deficiency. In order to address growing crop failures and nutritional issues, millets need to be revived. Majority of the farmers in Koraput district of Odisha are tribal, resources poor and mostly dependent on onset of monsoon for agriculture. The rainfall in this region is erratic and prolonged drought conditions are common occurrences. Numbers of rainy days were decreased over the period of time. Millets being climate resilient crops systems, revival of millets will enhance resilience of the farming systems and household food security against Climate Change. Finger millet is the second staple food after rice. Area under millets is drastically declining resulting in narrowing of the food diversity in consumption at household level. Increasing urban demand, improvements in processing machinery, availability of improved cultivars, better agronomic practices and possibility of accessing support irrigation has increased the potential of realizing higher productivity in millets thereby improving nutrition security, resilience and economic security of tribal households. The farmers were cultivating many traditional varieties in the past, but now have changed to improved varieties because the traditional varieties continuously perform low in terms of productivity due to mixture of seeds, loss of purity and long duration. This paper analyses how a tribal family set a milestone in finger millet by adopting improved agronomic and good agricultural practices (Figure 1).

Keywords: Cropping System; Nutrition Deficiency; Climate Resilient Crop; Koraput; Seeds

Abstract| Introduction| Materials and Methods| Study Design| Study Location| Duration of study| Results and Discussions| Conclusion| Acknowledgement| References|