ABSTRACT
Millets largely are adapted to dry and hot climates, they have been readily grown in many dryland areas and provide nutritional benefits, and as such, are an example of a key staple that could be valuable in sustainable diets. This chapter builds the case that millets could again be central to socio-cultural food systems among the indigenous communities of Odisha. Since the 1960s they have been largely replaced by rice and wheat, which has adversely impacted their nutritional security and the resilience of the agriculture systems. The Odisha Millets Mission (OMM) was launched to improve nutritional security. OMM has a multi-stakeholder framework with an end-to-end design that focuses on farmer-preferred cultivars, addressing millet-value chain constraints, promotion of culturally appropriate recipes, enhancing consumer awareness, building entrepreneurial capacity of women collectives in the millet value chain, and inclusion in government food welfare schemes. This case study documents the transformative food system of OMM, which allows healthy diets to be affordable and accessible through decentralised community engagement, resulting in external gains such as increases in rural incomes, women’s economic empowerment, and conservation of agricultural biodiversity.
