ZIRO: The International Year of Millets was celebrated in a befitting manner at Ziro in Lower Subansiri district of Arunachal Pradesh on Tuesday.
The agriculture department organized an awareness campaign on the importance of millets, exhibitions displaying millet food products, an interaction session between farmers and agriculture scientists, and buyers-sellers meet to mark the occasion.
Deputy commissioner Bamin Nime, who inaugurated the meet at the Abotani Hall as part of the celebration, said millet was once considered the poor man’s food, compared to rice.
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“However, with the change of time and food habits, millets have now become an essential food item, considering their high nutritional and health benefits,” he said.
He also exhorted the farmers of the district to take up millet cultivation seriously in the face of paucity of land in the Ziro valley.
The deputy commissioner also called upon the unemployed youths to take up farming of products like millets for self-employment and income generation in the face of declining white-collar jobs.
District Agriculture Officer Tasso Butung informed that ‘the United Nations General Assembly has declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets, which was a vision and initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.’
Butung said that Lower Subansiri has been given the opportunity to host the meet, involving farmers from Lower Subansiri, Upper Subansiri, Kamle, Kra Daadi and Kurung Kumey districts.
“Similar awareness campaigns will soon be conducted at the block level in Yazali, Yachuli, Talo, and Param Putu circles,” he informed.