Chennai: Two Tamil Nadu women farmers, in their early 30s, are now teaching their Italian counterparts on how to grow millets and prepare Murukku using finger millets. Meet Malliga Seerangan and Jayalalitha Eswaran who represented India at the International Agricultural Conference at Milan, Italy, on September 17. They shared their views on millet farming.
The duo made a two-hour presentation on 21 varieties of millets that are considered rare, nutritional aspects of the seeds and the value added products that are being sold in the market, at the ‘Agricultural biodiversity, value chains and women’s empowerment’ conference held as part of ‘Expo-Milan-2015.
“It was a proud moment for us and our federation to make it to an event where we were able to explain about the importance of organic millets that was once grown by our ancestors, later been forgotten and now we are in the process of upgrading the seeds on a larger scale,” said Jayalaitha Eswaran, representing the Kolli Hills Agro-biodiversity Conservers’ Federation (KHABCOFED).
“Also, we spoke on different traditional methods of conserving nutritious and under-utilised crops, women empowerment and value-added products that are being processed out of these rare millet varieties.
The five threatened varieties identified by the federation and M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) for the past 10 years were Italian, Kodo, Foxtail, Finger and Common millets.
“Millets and Murukku is an instant hit with Italians. Now with our farmers equipped with modern techniques of farming, there is a better connect between the Indian and Italians farmers,” said ED Israel Oliver King, principal scientist, who accompanied the two farmers to the conference. “They were really impressed by the preparation as people over there like fried foods,” said Malliga Seerangan.
The farming federation comprises 1,500 families that are working as a self help group (SHG) that collects millet varieties directly from farmers and markets them in different parts of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka under the label ‘Kolli Foods’.
