Millet

• 1. Introduction

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  Millet has fed human beings for roughly 7,000 years, making it one of the oldest cultivated grains on earth. At a place called Cishan in China, archaeologists discovered proso millet husk phytoliths pressed into storage pits alongside the remains of pit-houses, pottery, and stone tools. Those traces date back somewhere between 10,300 and 8,700 years ago. Long before wheat ruled the dinner table, long before rice spread across Asia, small-seeded grasses we call millets were already sustaining settled communities.

  Today, 97% of global millet production happens in developing countries, concentrated in the semi-arid tropics of Asia and Africa. India alone accounts for roughly 38% of the world total. Yet outside those regions, most people could walk past a millet field without recognizing it. How did a plant so ancient and so widely grown become so invisible to much of the world? And what does it actually mean to call something a millet in the first place? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. What Counts as Millet

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  Carl Linnaeus described foxtail millet in 1753 under the name Panicum italicum, giving it a place in the orderly world of plant taxonomy. But the category he was helping to define was already unruly. Millets are not a single plant family or even a single tribe. They are an assortment of small-seeded grasses that share practical qualities rather than close ancestry.

  All millets belong to the grass family Poaceae, but they scatter across different tribes and subfamilies. Pearl millet and foxtail millet sit within the Paniceae tribe of the subfamily Panicoideae. Finger millet belongs to the tribe Cynodonteae within Chloridoideae. Teff, sometimes counted as a millet, occupies the tribe Eragrostideae. Even sorghum, which is in the Andropogoneae tribe, is occasionally referred to as great millet, though most botanists treat it as a separate cereal.

  Within what is strictly counted as millet, the species list is long: pearl millet, finger millet, proso millet, foxtail millet, barnyard millet, kodo millet, little millet, browntop millet, fonio, and more. J. Brunken and colleagues, writing in 1977, formally classed the wild Pennisetum violaceum as part of the cultivated pearl millet species Pennisetum glaucum, a taxonomic decision that helped clarify pearl millet's origins but did little to simplify the broader category. The word millet itself traces back through Old French to the Latin millium, and ultimately to the Proto-Indo-European root meaning to crush, a hint at how people first processed these tough little seeds.

• 3. Deep Roots in Asia

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  Evidence from Cishan places foxtail millet cultivation at around 8,700 years ago in China, making it somewhat younger at that site than proso millet, which stretches back even further. Both crops appear in the Early Neolithic of China as important food sources. Chinese mythology preserves these origins in the figures of Shennong, a legendary emperor credited with domesticating millet, and Hou Ji, whose name translates directly as Lord Millet.

  By the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, foxtail millet and proso millet together supplied the majority of cereals eaten in the Zhengluo region, which corresponds to modern Henan province. A remarkable discovery in 2005 at the Lajia archaeological site in north China found noodles made from these two varieties of millet inside a 4,000-year-old earthenware bowl. The find was presented as the oldest evidence of millet noodles in China, though in 2010 other Chinese researchers raised doubts about the methodology and questioned whether the noodles were even millet at all.

  From China, Asian varieties of millet moved westward to the Black Sea region of Europe by 5000 BC. In Korea, palaeoethnobotanists have documented millet cultivation on the peninsula dating to the Middle Jeulmun pottery period, roughly 3500-2000 BC. Millet then continued as a key element in the intensive multicropping agriculture of the Mumun pottery period, about 1500-300 BC. In Japan, millets and their wild ancestors, including barnyard grass and panic grass, were cultivated during the Jomon period sometime after 4000 BC, showing just how far these grasses had spread within Asia alone.

• 4. Domestication in Africa and India

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  Pearl millet's African origins place its domestication in the Sahel region of West Africa, from the wild ancestor Pennisetum violaceum. Studies of isozymes point to the area northeast of the Senegal River as the likely site, with an estimated date tentatively around 6000 BC. Archaeological evidence appears later: finds at Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania date to 1936-1683 cal BC, at the lower Tilemsi valley in Mali to 2500-2000 cal BC, and at Birimi in northern Ghana to 1740 cal BC.

  Finger millet followed a different path. Native to the highlands of East Africa, it was domesticated before the third millennium BC and eventually spread to South India by 1800 BC. The Indian subcontinent developed its own millet culture independently. Little millet is believed to have been domesticated around 3000 BC in the region, while kodo millet was domesticated around 3700 BC, also in the Indian subcontinent. Browntop millet was likely first cultivated in the Deccan near the start of the third millennium BC, then spread across India before being gradually displaced by other species.

  Pearl millet reached the Indian subcontinent by 2000-1700 BC. Texts from the Yajurveda tradition identify foxtail millet, barnyard millet, and black finger millet by name, suggesting millet cultivation was well established in India around 1200 BC. That 6,000 years or so of documented cultivation across two continents is what gives millet the claim, noted in historical research, to a pivotal role in the rise of multi-crop agriculture and settled farming societies.

• 5. A Crop Built for Hardship

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  Pearl millet is one of only two major dryland crops, alongside sorghum, that can sustain farming in the semiarid, impoverished, less fertile agricultural zones of Africa and southeast Asia. Millets are highly tolerant of drought and other extreme weather conditions. More striking is the claim that millets are not merely adapted to poor soils but are actually more reliable than most other grain crops under those conditions.

  When conditions improve, millets respond. On a per-hectare basis, millet grain production can be two to four times higher with irrigation and soil supplements. The variety known as Okashana 1 illustrates what targeted improvement can accomplish. Developed in India from a naturally growing millet variety originally found in Burkina Faso, Okashana 1 was selected for trials in Zimbabwe. Farmers in Namibia adopted it enthusiastically after its release there in 1990, and it became the most popular variety in that country. Namibia is notable as the only non-Sahelian country where pearl millet, locally called mahangu, is the dominant food staple. Okashana 1 was later introduced to Chad, and it has significantly enhanced yields in Mauritania and Benin as well.

  Millets face real threats from pests and diseases. Insect pests include corn borers, stemborers, the millet midge, aphids, thrips, beetles, and grasshoppers. Fungal diseases such as downy mildew, ergot, and blast can cause serious damage. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations declared 2023 the International Year of Millets, responding to a request from the Indian Government made in 2018, a recognition of how much global food security still depends on these ancient grasses.

• 6. Millet on the Table

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  In Niger and Namibia, millet forms over 65% of the cereals eaten. In Burkina Faso, Chad, and the Gambia, it accounts for a large portion of total cereal food consumption. Fermented beverages made with millet carry local names across the continent: cipumu in Tanzania, bushera in Uganda, mangisi in Zimbabwe, and marrisa in Sudan. Ground and mixed with milk, millet can be prepared as fura and brukina.

  In Ukraine, millet has a historical association with the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who ate a porridge called kulish made primarily from the grain, cooked in a cauldron with stewed vegetables and meat. That dish remains part of modern Ukrainian cuisine. In the Lipetsk Oblast of Russia, millet appears in both ritual and everyday meals, including millet fritters called chichi. In Germany, millet is eaten sweet, for example with milk and berries at breakfast.

  The Indian subcontinent uses millet heavily as flour. Finger millet in Karnataka is made into ragi rotti flatbread and ragi mudde dough lumps. In the Himalayan region, including Nepal, Sikkim, and Darjeeling, millet is fermented into alcoholic beverages such as tongba and raksi. Vietnam has its own millet preparation in banh da ke, a sweet snack consisting of smashed millet and mung bean topped with sliced dried coconut meat, wrapped in a crunchy rice cake.

• 7. Nutrition and the Antinutrient Problem

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  Millets carry nutritional profiles broadly comparable to wheat and rice. Barnyard millet, for instance, contains 11.2 grams of protein and 10.1 grams of fiber per 100 grams, with 15.2 milligrams of iron. Finger millet stands out for its calcium content, at 344 milligrams per 100 grams, far above wheat at 41 milligrams and rice at 10 milligrams. Proso millet contributes 12.5 grams of protein per 100 grams.

  Millets also contain antinutrients, compounds that interfere with the digestion and use of nutrients in the body. Heavy millet consumption has been linked to endemic goitre in rural areas of Africa and Asia. Processing techniques can reduce these compounds: malting, milling, cooking, and fermentation all lower antinutrient levels to varying degrees.

  For people managing gluten-related disorders such as coeliac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity, or wheat allergy, millet offers a viable replacement for gluten-containing cereals. A residual risk of contamination with gluten-containing cereals remains. Research on improving millet varieties continues at institutions including the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Telangana, India, and the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service at Tifton, Georgia, with the potential to raise yields and disease resistance further in the crops that feed hundreds of millions of people in some of the world's most food-insecure regions.