Millets are a group of highly variable small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the
world as cereal crops or grains for human food and as fodder. There is evidence of the
cultivation of millet in the Korean Peninsula dating to the Middle Pottery Period (around
3,500–2,000BC). In India, millets have been mentioned in some of the oldest Yajurveda
texts, identifying foxtail millet (priyangava), Barnyard millet (aanava) and black finger
millet (shyaamaka), thus indicating that millet consumption was very common, pre-
dating to the Indian Bronze Age (4,500BC).Until 50 years ago millets were the major
grain grown in India. From a staple food and integral part of local food cultures, just like
many other things, millets have come to be looked down upon by modern urban
consumers as “coarse grains” – something that our village ancestors may have lived on,
but that they had left behind and exchanged for a more “refined” diet.
