India Proposed the International Year of Millets, 72 Sponsors Backed It at the UN on 3 March 2021, and India's Millet Crop Reached 185.92 Lakh Tonnes in 2024-25

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2023 the International Year of Millets on 3 March 2021, adopting resolution 75/263 without a vote. India presented the proposal, according to FAO (the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization), and the Agriculture Ministry’s final estimate for 2024-25 puts India’s millet crop at 185.92 lakh tonnes, up from 160.00 lakh tonnes in 2021-22. A lakh is 100,000, so that is 18.59 million tonnes.

How the resolution reached the General Assembly

Draft A/75/L.63, dated 22 February 2021, named 19 sponsors: Angola, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Eritrea, Fiji, India, Iraq, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, the Russian Federation, Senegal, Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Uganda, Viet Nam and Zimbabwe. An addendum dated 3 March 2021 added 53 more, among them Brazil, China, Japan, South Africa and Indonesia. Together they make 72 sponsors, the number the government’s Press Information Bureau (PIB) gave in a note of 10 November 2022.

At its 56th plenary meeting on 3 March 2021 the Assembly adopted the text, and the UN’s list of 75th-session resolutions records adoption without a vote. That PIB note gives 5 March, the distribution date printed on the circulated text, while the UN record gives 3 March.

Three pages long, the resolution decides to declare 2023 the International Year of Millets and invites governments, UN bodies, civil society, companies and universities to mark it with activities that raise awareness of the nutritional and health benefits of millets and their suitability for cultivation under adverse and changing climatic conditions. FAO is asked to facilitate the Year and to report to the Assembly at its seventy-ninth session with an evaluation, and costs are to be met from voluntary contributions. Its preamble recalls resolution 10/2019, which the FAO Conference adopted on 28 June 2019.

FAO opened the Year at its Rome headquarters on 6 December 2022. Its report of the ceremony says India presented the proposal and chairs the Year’s steering committee, and that India’s Minister of State for Agriculture read a message from the Prime Minister.

What FAO says about the crops

Millets are small-grained cereals of dry regions. FAO’s list for the Year includes pearl, proso, foxtail, barnyard, little, kodo, browntop and finger millets, fonio, sorghum, teff and Job’s tears. India’s agriculture statistics group four: jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet), ragi (finger millet) and the small millets.

For climate, FAO’s page for the Year says millets can grow on arid land with minimal inputs and maintenance, resist or tolerate many diseases and pests, and cope with climate shocks better than other cereals. In arid areas, FAO adds, they are very often the only crops that can be harvested in the dry season. India’s March 2023 government explainer says most Indian millet-growing states get 200 to 800 millimetres of rainfall.

Nutrition is the other half of FAO’s case. It describes millets as good sources of minerals, dietary fibre, antioxidants and protein, as gluten-free, and as a cost-effective source of iron. Per 100 grams of raw grain it lists 6.7 grams of protein and 11.2 grams of fibre for finger millet, and 9.9 grams and 9.5 grams for pearl millet. FAO says the values depend on species, variety and growing conditions.

What India grows, year by year

Jowar, bajra, ragi and small millets together make up millet output in the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare’s count. Final estimates in its time series, as on 27 May 2026, run as follows:

From 2021-22 to 2024-25 that is a gain of 25.92 lakh tonnes, or 16.2 per cent, by tuput’s arithmetic. Of every year in the series, which the department’s table starts at 2015-16, 2024-25 is the highest. APEDA, the Commerce Ministry’s agricultural export agency, quotes the same 18.59 million tonnes.

Bajra supplied 60.3 per cent of the 2024-25 crop, with jowar, ragi and small millets behind it, the PIB’s August 2025 note says. Rajasthan, subject of our state profile, produced the most, followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka. Millets came to about 5.6 per cent of the 3,320.50 lakh tonnes of cereals in the 2024-25 final estimate, by tuput’s division of two ministry figures.

Tables the Food Ministry laid before the Lok Sabha on 15 March 2023 show the land behind the crop. Adding the four all-India area totals gives 13.63 million hectares in 2020-21 and 12.29 million in 2021-22, which works out to yields of about 1,322 and 1,302 kilograms a hectare by tuput’s division. Using FAO data for 2019, the PIB’s March 2023 explainer puts India’s yield at 1,239 kilograms a hectare against a world average of 1,229.

India’s share of world output depends on the note. On FAO’s 2019 data, the March 2023 explainer gives 20 per cent of world area and production. A later note, in August 2025, says India produces 38.4 per cent of global millets, citing FAO for 2023, and calls the country the largest producer.

Before the Green Revolution, the same explainer says, millets were around 40 per cent of India’s cultivated grains, against around 20 per cent now, and the food-security push of the 1960s left them as “orphan crops”. Our piece on M. S. Swaminathan covers that push.

The research institute in Hyderabad

The ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) at Hyderabad is the country’s nodal institute for millets. According to its annual report for 2025, the institute traces back to 1987, when the National Research Centre on Sorghum was carved out of a regional station of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. A 2009 upgrade made it the Directorate of Sorghum Research, and in 2015 it took its present name. Two national research networks work with it: one on sorghum and small millets with 31 centres in 15 states, and one on pearl millet with 13 centres in 10 states.

On 18 March 2023 the Prime Minister declared IIMR a Global Centre of Excellence on Millets. Among the 2025 annual report’s entries are 19 value-added millet technologies developed and being commercialised, 33 agreements signed for seed production of forage cultivars and value-added products, and a published genome for little millet, about 850 million base pairs on 18 chromosomes. In 2024-25, the PIB’s August 2025 note says, the Central Variety Release Committee approved 276 new millet varieties, among them 84 of sorghum, 80 of pearl millet and 49 of finger millet.

Missions, state programmes and the incentive scheme

Millets were notified as nutri-cereals in April 2018, the year the government also held a National Year of Millets, the March 2023 explainer says. A sub-mission on nutri-cereals under the National Food Security Mission, now the National Food Security and Nutrition Mission, runs in all districts of 28 states and two Union Territories, the PIB’s August 2023 and August 2025 notes say. Earlier, in March 2023, the explainer had put it at 212 districts in 14 states.

Eleven states run missions of their own, the August 2023 note says: Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Odisha’s started in 2017, according to the August 2025 note.

For food makers, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries runs a Production Linked Incentive scheme for millet-based products. Outlay is Rs 800 crore for 2022-23 to 2026-27. As of the August 2025 note, Rs 793.27 crore has been approved for 29 companies, 8 large and 21 small and medium. A product must contain at least 15 per cent millet by weight or volume, use millets grown in India and be sold in branded consumer packs, and a company must grow eligible sales by at least 10 per cent a year to earn the incentive.

The Delhi conference of March 2023

The Global Millets (Shree Anna) Conference ran on 18 and 19 March 2023 at the NASC Complex on the Indian Agricultural Research Institute campus in Pusa, New Delhi. “Shree Anna” is the name the Indian government now uses for millets, with Shree as an honorific prefix. Inaugurating it, the Prime Minister unveiled a commemorative stamp and coin, and a book of millet standards and a compendium of millet start-ups were launched.

FAO’s event page says 102 countries took part, agriculture ministers from Guyana, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname and Zambia attended, more than 2,000 people came in person and more than 8.3 million joined online. Guyana’s President told the conference, in the PIB’s account, that Guyana is earmarking 200 acres for millet production with Indian technical support.

What millets earn abroad

India exported millet products worth US$34.32 million in 2021-22, the Commerce Ministry’s November 2022 release says, which it put at nearly 1 per cent of production. APEDA drew up an export plan from December 2022 with 16 trade expos and country catalogues. In 2024-25 India shipped 89,164.96 tonnes worth US$37 million, the PIB’s August 2025 note says. APEDA’s page, citing the commerce statistics agency DGCIS, gives 138.69 thousand tonnes worth Rs 543.40 crore, or US$61.57 million, for 2025-26. Millet is a small line within India’s record export year.

What comes next

Land under millets had been taken over by commercial crops, oilseeds, pulses and maize, whose production policy supports through subsidised inputs, procurement and the public distribution system, the PIB’s March 2023 explainer says. FAO’s page says millet production and demand declined as wheat, maize and rice became dietary preferences. Our article on diet and diabetes covers the survey data on what Indians eat today. In its closing lines the PIB’s August 2025 note calls for millets to become “a daily part of India’s food culture and economy.”

On procurement, the August 2023 PIB note says the government procured 423,675 tonnes of jowar, 758,094 tonnes of bajra and 1,676,067 tonnes of ragi in the preceding five years, a total of 2.86 million tonnes by tuput’s addition. Output in 2022-23 alone was 173.21 lakh tonnes.

For 2023-24 the ministry’s final estimate noted drought-like conditions in southern states and Maharashtra and a prolonged dry spell in August, especially in Rajasthan, which it said mainly affected pulses, coarse cereals, soybean and cotton. Its third advance estimate for 2025-26, as on 27 May 2026, puts millet output at 175.84 lakh tonnes.