The ecological and cultural value of millets – who grew and continue to; how and why do they continue
Tuesday, May 19th 2020. 3 PM to 4 PM (Indian Std Time)
The primary motivation for agricultue has been the need to meet the food requirement of humans. Over time, this gradually moved to meeting the ever increasing demand for commodities and its markets. Longer term perspectives were compromised for short term returns and extreme events such as the current pandemic reminds us how badly we have failed in building sustainable food systems. Conscious efforts to move our food systems to millets and rainfed farming products and away from intensively cultivated nutrient depeleted current food system are steps in the right direction. Millets are extremely rich in nutrition and have recently caught the attention of many seeking better food, health and well being. The ecological value of millets makes them the central figures in this emerging agricultural sector being put together as we attempt to move towards a more sustainable and equitable food system.
In this session, we shall discuss the agro-ecological niche that millets occupy, how they have sustained and what we can learn from these histories to better shape our future food systems.
Anchor/Moderator: Nina Sengupta
Nina Sengupta is an ecologist with a doctorate in wildlife science. She lives in Auroville and also works around the globe as an independent consultant, integrating biodiversity conservation and development options. She has worked in South and South-east Asia, Africa, Finland and the USA. She is passionate about food forest, food gardening and making the life sciences active and participatory for all. She has published a colouring book for adults, the first in India, on Edible Weeds.
The Edible Weeds colouring book, An article in Outlook.
Speaker: Dr. Dwiji Guru
Dwiji is a serial entrepreneur, technology developer, researcher, and advocate for sustainable food systems. Dwiji consult for and work with various stakeholders – from farmers to consumers – on dry land farming, processing, specializing in various aspects of millets spanning a broad spectrum from cultivation practices, processing, cooking to nutrition.
LinkedIn profile, Facebook page.
Participate in the webinar
Please register by filling out this form.
Please note that registration closes at 10AM of the day of the webinar, i.e. May 13th, 2020. In case you are reading this after the registration closed, you can still participate by joining us on the YouTube Livestream.
We request all registrants to please check their email for the link to join the webinar session. Do join the webinar early – we have had an overwhelming response with 570+ registrations so far. The webinar technology platform license allows for limited attendees only. So in case you receive a message that the webinar is full, please join us through the YouTube livestream (details below). Volunteers shall be the watching the Q&A section of the webinar platform and the comments section of YouTube Livestream and relaying questions and comments to the moderator and speaker.
Discuss
Know Millets, Telegram channel and discussion group. Please join the Telegram channel to receive regular updates about the webinars and other millet related information. An associated discussion group has also been set up to provide a platform for those looking to discuss about millets.
View Livestream, recordings
The sessions shall be Live streamed on YouTube. Please visit (and subscribe to !) the RRA network YouTube channel. Recordings of completed sessions are also posted there.
From the session
Previous sessions in KMW 2020
- May 4th – Community centric approach – cultivation, processing, consumption
- May 7th – Cooking Characteristics & insights on millet dishes
- May 10th – Millets and Agro-bio, food, and nutritional diversity – past, present and future
- May 13th – Millet Processing – Principles, Techniques and Challenges
- May 16th – Grain characteristics- structural, nutritional & storage
The Millet Foundation 
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