Data suggests that while substantial amounts of Rice & Wheat are procured by the government at MSP, the government procurement in the case of Millets is negligible, except in the case of Ragi. It is not even 5% in the case of other millets. The year 2023 is being observed as the ‘International Year of Millets’ by the UN, following India’s proposal. The objective behind observing the year of millets is to promote the production, consumption, and export of millets through the creation of domestic & global demand for millets. The focus is on the sustainable production of millets and the nutrition security it can help achieve. In the first story of this series on millets, we looked at the different benefits of millets and their potential to address various Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Numerous measures have been rolled out by both Union and State governments to popularize millets, especially in the last few years. Despite these efforts, there hasn’t been a significant improvement in the production of millets or nutri- cereals in India as highlighted in the previous story. The production was more than 200 lakh tonnes in 2010-11 and dropped to 137.1 tonnes in 2018-19. Despite the improvement in production in the subsequent two years, the production dropped again in 2021-22 and is estimated to drop further, though marginally, in 2022-23. The production of Jowar, Ragi, and other small millets has also been on a decline in recent years. Jowar, Ragi, & Bajra are the only millets that are currently covered under the Minimum Support Price (MSP) regime. Among other initiatives proposed to promote millets, the Union government will also focus on enhancing the procurement of millets by states. Usually, coarse grains including maize and millets covered under MSP, are procured from the farmers by the State governments based on their plan of procurement with prior approval of the Central government and subject to distribution of procured coarse grain under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in the procuring state. Procurement of coarse grains is very low compared to rice and wheat According to data from a parliament response, the quantity of rice and wheat procured by the government has increased in the last five years. Between 2017-18 and 2021-22, the procurement of rice went up from 568 LMT to 881 LMT registering an increase of 55% while that of wheat went up by almost 41% from 308 LMT to 433 LMT. On the other hand, among coarse grains, the procurement of Jowar increased considerably from 0.026 LMT to about 1.57 LMT during the same period. The procurement of Bajra which had improved significantly until 2020-21 saw a sudden drop in 2021-22. However, in 2022-23, as of 07 December 2022, over 1.1 LMT of Bajra was procured. Likewise, the procurement of Maize also dropped in 2021-22 and improved in 2022-23. The quantity of Ragi procured also increased more than 5 times between 2018-19 and 2020-21 and dropped marginally in 2022-23. Production data for these crops have been taken from RBI’s Handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy 2021-22. On comparing the procurement with the production, the following trends can be observed during the last five years period: In short, it is evident that the share of coarse grains procured is much lower compared to wheat and paddy. While there is an improvement in the share of Ragi procured, the procurement of other coarse grains has not even crossed 5%. 7 states are major contributors to procurement of coarse grains During the last five years, seven states have been the major contributors to the production and procurement of coarse grains. These are Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh. To understand the difference in the procurement of the staple grains of rice and wheat, and coarse grains across states, the production and procurement of the crops in these seven states have been considered. For paddy, data is available for 2016-17 to 2020-21 and for the rest, data for 2017-18 to 2021-22 is available. Also, for Karnataka and Odisha, data on wheat procurement is not available. With respect to coarse grains, procurement is the highest in Karnataka as compared to other states. Karnataka accounted for 44% of the procurement at the national level in 2018-19 which has increased steadily to 81% in 2021-22. During this period, Maharashtra’s share has dropped from 71% in 2017-18 to less than 7% in 2021-22. Haryana procures the highest share of wheat and paddy In terms of percentage share of procurement as against the production, the share of wheat procured increased from 69% to 81% between 2017-18 and 2021-22 in Haryana and from 12% to 17% in Uttar Pradesh.