During his visit to the White House on June 21 2023, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was served “Marinated Millets” by his host, US President Joe Biden, an appreciation of the importance of the International Year of Millets 2023 that was launched by the UN on India’s initiative. That year also coincided with India’s presidency of the G20, which served as another opportunity to globally promote millets as healthy and “eco-friendly smart food”. The Indian state of Odisha especially has set up heavily financed policies to spread the consumption of millets to the urban middle classes. 2023 was also the year that Odisha hosted the Men’s Hockey World Cup and Millets were promoted alongside hockey, for instance, through Millet Shakti (“Power”) Cafes at the Kalinga stadium, one of the venues of the World Cup. It seems that ancient grains that have largely been forgotten in Europe are experiencing their glorious comeback. Suitably, Prime Minister Modi renamed millets as “Honorable Grain” (Shri Anna) during the Global Millets Conference in 2023.

In our ongoing research projects (2021-2025) we investigate these new dynamics around millets from the point of view of the local cultivators and stakeholders, those who normally do not dine in the White House. As we deal with big questions and complex problems, we have formed an international and interdisciplinary research consortium called Cereal Cultures, in which three different projects are combined led by Peter Berger, René Cappers and Roland Hardenberg (funded by the DFG and the NWO). In this blog we want to introduce our research, show why it is important and present a few preliminary results.

The staple food-crops of the past have shaped our present, our economies and livelihoods, social organizations and political systems, environments and worldviews. This has, for instance, been demonstrated with regard to rice and maize (Bray et al. 2015, McCann 2005). Not only have crops influenced the development of human cultures, crops and cultures have co-evolved, equally shaping (food) cultural practices as well as crop characteristics and habitats. Crops and cultures form an integrated whole and thus cannot be considered independent of each other. This is commonly neither recognized by agro-scientific understandings of millets nor by policymakers. The entanglement of crops, cuisines and tastes, techniques and knowledge, religion and cultural identities generally stabilizes certain cultivation practices and crop choices. However, this resilience has been regularly disrupted in the past, amongst other things by climate change, trade and migration, which resulted in adaptations and transformations in modes of livelihood and culture (Garcia-Granero et al. 2016). In order to comprehend the present, therefore, we have to understand the complexities of such dynamics in the past (Costanza et al. 2007). Likewise, our present choices will influence future trajectories. We are currently in the midst of major transformations of human-environment relationships.

Globally, the valuation of millets, a group of domesticated grasses currently grown as cereal crops mostly in India and Africa (Weber 1998), has changed dramatically in recent years. Previously disregarded as “poor-man’s food”, millets are now celebrated as “smart food” for the future because of their nutritional properties, drought and disease resistance and low ecological footprint (Bergamini et al. 2013, Bhat et al. 2018, Bose 2018). Accordingly, millets are considered to contribute to the attainment of the Sustainable-Development-Goals such as “No Poverty”, “Zero Hunger”, “Good Health”, “Responsible Consumption” as well as “Climate Action”, and 2023 was marked as the UN International Year of Millets. The rediscovery of millets has led NGOs and governments to promote millets with various initiatives and investments. India has launched massive policies — especially in Odisha, the region with which our projects are concerned — which may have a considerable impact on local lifeworlds and livelihoods.