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Centre asks states to include millets in mid-day meals; move likely to ease pressure on food stocks-Urmi Goswami
-The Economic Times

The Centre has asked states to introduce millets in mid-day meal schemes in schools to boost demand for the nutritious grain, but experts say the move would also ease pressure on food stocks as rice output is expected to decline this year and the food security legislation would require an additional 63 million tonnes of grain.

The government expects a 9% fall in this year's output of rice, which accounts for 85% of the food grain allocation for the mid-day meal scheme.

The mid-day meal, which is the largest government school feeding programme, has a food grain requirement of 28.50 lakh tonnes in 2012-13, which includes 23.8 lakh tonnes of rice and 4.7 lakh tonnes of wheat. The government also needs to meet the requirement of the Food Security Bill that is expected to be passed in the winter session of Parliament.

The additional demand on this account is 63 million tonnes. The agriculture ministry is looking to use the captive demand of the mid-day meal scheme to boost millet or coarse grain production in the country. It has given the nutritional explanation for this move. In a letter to state chief secretaries, Agriculture Secretary Ashish Bahuguna said, "millet crops are well known for their high nutritional value. Millets are also known to be effective in controlling diabetes and obesity and are widely consumed as health food...You would appreciate that introduction of millets in the mid day meal scheme would go a long way in increasing the nutritional standard of school children."

While it is true that millets have high nutritional value, the mid-day meal scheme's high level demand of food grain, which is currently met solely through rice and wheat, would put a greater pressure on the food production in the post-food bill scenario. According to the Planning Commission's Working Group on food grains, which is looking into balancing demand and supply during the 12th plan period, the demand projection should be in the range of 255 to 260 million tonnes of food grains. This takes into consideration the increased food grain requirements for the Food Security Bill.

The situation is likely to be more acute if the government succeeds in pushing through the food security bill in the Winter Session of Parliament. It was expected to be taken up in the washed-out Monsoon Session. Expectations of lower rice output has led to an increase in rice prices by 14 to 15 and 7 to 8 for the cheapest varieties of rice. There are concerns about wheat availability also.

"The Department of Food and Public Distribution System had agreed to facilitate the supply of millets for mid-day meals but has informed that the response from the states for allocation of millet grains under the mid-day meal scheme is not very encouraging," Bahuguna said.

Till now, coarse gains or millets have been treated as standby. In his letter, the agriculture secretary said that its scheme, "Initiative for Nutritional Security through Intensive Millet Promotion" introduced last year has failed to pick up in implementation on account of lack of adequate demand. Bahuguna said that introducing millets in the mid-day meal basket "would also help in increasing the overall demand for millets and thereby result in enhancement of farm incomes.''

The agriculture secretary acknowledged, "the area under cultivation of millets has been steadily declining even though its cultivation is ideally suited for the arid and semi arid regions of the country."