Small millets such as little millet and foxtail millet can be difficult and labour-intensive to process because their edible grain must be separated from a tightly attached husk. That processing bottleneck has been recognised as one reason traditional small millets have disappeared from everyday diets in some communities.

The EPW study examines this issue through action research and co-production, focusing on the introduction of small-millet dehulling machinery in three districts across Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.

The broader intervention was designed not simply around distributing machinery, but around interaction among farmers, users, local entrepreneurs, technology developers and millet-development organisations.

Earlier field documentation from the initiative indicates that entrepreneurs were supported with dehullers and starter quantities of little or foxtail millet while awareness campaigns and food festivals promoted consumption.

This is important because access to machinery does not automatically create a viable millet ecosystem. Previous Indian millet-development programmes have found that processing infrastructure needs to be accompanied by training, handholding, local market creation and user-responsive technology design.

For Millets.News, the strongest takeaway is that reviving small millets requires solving post-harvest and household-processing constraints alongside cultivation and market promotion.