Sanjana Reddy, principal scientist at the Indian Institute of Millet Research (IIMR), stressed the need to focus on nutrition and biodiversity, as the month-long mobile biodiversity festival by the Deccan Development Society (DDS) began at Jamgarbowli in Mogudampalli mandal on Saturday. Launched in Thanda.
He said that the country has a diversity of soil and eco-regions. “After the Green Revolution, monocropping of some crops has spread across the country. It was intended to challenge the food security crisis facing our country, but has now resulted in many other crises in health, nutrition and ecology. Yield was considered the sole metric to measure agriculture but other values such as nutrition and biodiversity were ignored.”
Dr. Sanjana Reddy expressed happiness over the festival being led by women farmers themselves to celebrate their heritage crops and explain the value of millets at the grassroots level and their consumption, seed conservation and seed safety and improving livelihoods. Value addition initiatives for Follow the path of more and more farmers.
DDS Director PV Satish said that it is amazing to see how the festival has grown in the last two decades. “Earlier, it was a small festival at one place. But now it has expanded to about 25 villages and farmers themselves are taking initiative to organize the festival in their villages. Jangarbowli Thanda is a remote and relatively new village for DDS. Nevertheless, he has taken up the responsibility of organizing the opening ceremony and celebrating it in a grand manner. Jathra is a traditional form of celebration in our villages and the innovation of this festival is that instead of believing in any god or religion, traditional seeds are celebrated and paraded around in this festival.
Considered as a neglected and dry food, millet is now recognized as a key solution to the challenges of the current food system, said Shri Satish, adding that indigenous knowledge and long-term efforts of women farmers have enabled the crop to survive for decades. is kept.
Jayashree Cherukuri, Co-Director, DDS, Chauhan Sudha Bai, Jyoti Bai, Kidhidoddi Mariamma and Begari Rangamma, Mogudampally farmers’ biodiversity conservationists participated in the programme.