
A collective of women farmers has taken to millet cultivation to improve incomes, nutrition as well as fight climate change
Millets seem to be everywhere these days: from curated food festivals to Instagrammable cafes, and national govt programs to events at international organisations. Yet, long before they captured public imagination, they became the medium for a collective of women farmers across India to empower themselves, not only financially, but in a host of other ways.
One of them is ‘Millet Sisters Network’, an organisation of 2,000-odd women farmers which found a new way of sustenance and life in millet-based farming. Saraswathi Malluvalasa, an Andhra-based farmer who founded the network, says conversations with women made her realise that most of the control over the markets, seeds, and money was in the hands of men, and women failed to get recognised as farmers, even in govt schemes. “One of the most important things was to revolutionise just the basic idea of what is on your plate and whether that is giving women the kind of nutritional security that they deserve,” Malluvalasa says.