More Climate Literacy Could Help Tribal Millet Farmers Adapt To Impacts

Perched at more than 1,200 metres above sea level, Kolli Hills, a mountain block in Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district, is a bastion of millet cultivation. The Malayalis – a tribal community inhabiting the Hills – have cultivated various millets for generations. The advent of climate change, however, is making cultivation more challenging, and its impacts haven’t gone unnoticed.

India launched its Millet Mission in 2023, with the aim of creating awareness and increasing the production and consumption of millets across the country. States such as Tamil Nadu followed suit, introducing schemes that incorporate millets in public food distribution networks and offering subsidies for processed minor millets.

However, these schemes are not always suitable for the needs of millet farmers in places like Kolli Hills, said Israel Oliver King E.D., Director of Biodiversity at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). “In agro-ecologies where tribal communities are cultivating a diverse bundle of millets, including less popular ones, it needs to be respected and encouraged. With mission-led schemes, there is a risk of homogenisation towards popular varieties,” said King, adding, “The right kind of incentive – either a form of assured procurement for extra millets, or access to processing facilities – can go a long way in ensuring crop diversity and resilience.”

Although millets have earned a reputation for being climate resilient, changing weather patterns are adding to the challenges in sowing and harvesting millets. A recent study published in Frontiers in Climate surveyed millet farmers in Kolli Hills and found that changing weather patterns were perceptible in the community and negatively impacting crop productivity.

How millet farmers perceive climate

Kolli Hills are spread over 440 square kilometres, and the Malayali group of tribals are the most populous inhabitants of the region. Millets occupy a significant role in local cuisine and agriculture, where production is primarily geared towards local consumption and secondarily as goods to be sold in other markets.

The study surveying 125 millet farming households in this region was jointly conducted by the Indian Institute of Millets Research (under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research) and MSSRF to understand how “the intersection of socio-economic, personal, and agroecological factors shape tribal farmers’ perceptions of climate change and their adaptation strategies.”

Meteorological data from 2011 to 2023 collected for the study shows that annual average rainfall fluctuated between 870 mm and 1,200 mm, a high variability for farming that depends entirely on rain and not irrigation. Yields also fell to below two tonnes per hectare in 2022 and 2023 when average temperatures rose above 29 degrees Celsius, the study found.

Most farmers surveyed said they believed climate change to be impacting all aspects of farming, and more specifically that frequent drought was impacting crop productivity. Farmers also noticed that those with fewer resources were worse off. A majority of farmers interviewed had land holdings of less than 1.5 hectares (78%), while around 16% had between 1.6 and 3 hectares of land. “Most of the poor farmers who had low risk-bearing capacity were affected to a greater extent than the resource-rich farmers having more resources such as finance, land, and equipment,” the study found.

The most perceptible climate impacts, according to the households surveyed, were longer duration of summers, shorter duration of winters, changes in the timings of summer and winter onset, and a fall in the number of rainy days in a year. “As a response to this, we found that farmers were sometimes switching to shorter duration millets, like the proso millet or foxtail millet, which take 70 days to mature compared to the finger millet and little millet, which take 100 to 120 days,” said Rajendra Chapke, a scientist at the ICAR-Indian Indian Institute of Millets Research, who led the study.

While most households had low literacy levels, a higher proportion – 66% – had access to smartphones. Most households also reported being part of farmer cooperatives and other networks through which they received information about agriculture. “Leveraging mass media through these networks can be an effective tool to communicate climate impacts and improving farming practices to prevent yield losses. Government support in the form of crop insurance is needed too,” Chapke said.

Harnessing millet diversity

Kolli Hills are known as a hub of millet cultivation, but the area sown under millets has ceded way to other cash crops like tapioca over the years. The MSSRF began interventions in Kolli Hills in the 1990s to revive millet cultivation, and to study the circumstances under which millet cultivation and consumption could thrive.

Over a 20-year study period, researchers, led by King, found that providing milling and processing equipment and decentralising production and seed conservation helped maintain continuity in cultivation. “In these regions, millet diversity is key, because it also aids adaptation when there is climate variability. If sowing windows are delayed or come early, the farmer has a choice for which millet to cultivate,” said King of MSSRF. “But to do that, they need to have access to seeds so that the choice is made available. In many places, the cultivation of minor millets with smaller maturation windows, is vanishing.”

Major millets include sorghum, pearl millet, and finger millet, while minor millets include little millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, and kodo millet. Trends in millet cultivation in Tamil Nadu from 2011 and 2022 show that the area under sorghum (jowar) cultivation grew the most, followed by pearl millet (bajra). Minor millets, on the other hand, were on a declining trend.

M. Karthikeyan, former Chief Executive of the Dhan Foundation’s Small Millet Foundation, who was not involved in the ICAR-IIMR or MSSRF studies, agreed that minor millets were in need of more policy support. “Finger millet is preferred because it needs the least processing – it is a single layer grain. The other minor millets are closed grains which require more processing post-harvest. Removing these layers is a traditional skill that’s also being lost across generations. If farmers don’t have access to processing facilities, they prefer not to sow these varieties,” he said.

Among the interventions introduced by MSSRF in Kolli Hills was the community-led seed banks that kept a diverse variety of millet seeds. By 2022, 12 of the 15 seed banks were still functional, with hundreds of transactions each year, indicating an interest in cultivation. Women play a central role in the management of millets, and distribution of small-scale processing units was found to reduce their drudgery, MSSRF’s 20-year study found.

A combination of seed conservation, access to processing, and support incentives can help sustain and encourage the cultivation of minor millets, said King. “If monocultures of millet crops come up bolstered by mission schemes, what will happen once the mission or scheme moves out of those areas? A ruling variety may fail when the impact of weather is extreme. Having a variety of seeds is the route for resilience.”

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay-India. Read the original article here)