Raipur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested States and NGOs to conduct various programmes and create a task force for the promotion of millets. He launched 35 climate resilient crop varieties on Tuesday from Raipur in Chhattisgarh.

Modi has dedicated to the nation the newly constructed campus of National Institute of Biotic Stress Management at Raipur in Chhattisgarh and distributed the Green Campus Awards to agricultural universities. Before launching the crop varieties, he interacted with select farmers, who use innovative methods in farming.

Modi in his address on the occasion said that it was due to India’s efforts that 2023 has been declared as the International Year of Millets by the UN. This is a good opportunity to showcase our tradition of millet farming on the international platform. But we will need to start working right away. I appeal to all the NGOs to arrange food festivals on the theme of millets, and conduct competitions on millet recipes. We will need to innovate if we want to take this to global platform in 2023.

I will also ask all the states to form a task force comprising experts from agriculture universities, scientists and progressive farmers and think about how India can lead and bring benefits to its farmers in 2023. You might as well start preparing for it now. Terming climate change as a big challenge not just for agriculture, but the entire ecosystem, the Prime Minister said that livestock and agriculture sectors are bearing its brunt and the 35 varieties launched today are part of our efforts aimed at meeting that challenge.

ICAR had developed thirty five crop varieties with special traits like climate resilience and higher nutrient content have been developed this year. These include a drought tolerant variety of chickpea; wilt and sterility mosaic resistant pigeon pea; early maturing variety of soybean; disease resistant varieties of rice and bio – fortified varieties of wheat, pearl millet, maize and chickpea, quinoa, buckwheat, winged bean and faba bean. These millets are beneficial for health. Therefore, given today’s lifestyle diseases, millets are much in demand.
Modi interacted with the farmers Zaitoon Begum from Ganderbal district in Jammu & Kashmir; Kulwant Singh from Bulandshahar in Uttar Pradesh; Darshana Pednekar from Bardez in Goa; Thoiba Singh from Manipur; and Suresh Rana from Udham Singh Nagar in Uttarakhand. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel also spoke on the occasion.