Flour Power: Women-led Millet Value Chains Improve Local Nutrition

This excerpt follows the work of Krishna Self-Help Group (SHG), a collective of 10 women from small and marginal farming households in Keonjhar, Odisha, who have built a local enterprise around processing finger millet, or ragi, into flour. Founded by Ganga Singh, the group processes millet grown on nearby farms into flour. This flour is then used to make laddus that are distributed among children through anganwadi centres. Its members process approximately two tonnes of millet a day, connecting women’s livelihoods to public nutrition programmes and the nutritional needs of their community.

The collective had modest beginnings, founded with member contributions of just ₹25 each. Today, it has turned into an enterprise that provides them with regular incomes of about ₹20,000 per month. Their case makes visible the work that happens between cultivation and consumption: dehusking, processing, preparing food, and building the local infrastructure to provide food and nutritional security. It also highlights the significance of programmes like the PM POSHAN scheme (which provides one free hot meal a day to students up to the eighth standard in government schools), and the Odisha Millets Mission in promoting nutritionally-dense and climate-resilient grains like millets, as well as creating markets for millet-based foods.