Introduction

Millet is a collective term referring to a number of small-seeded annual grasses that are cultivated as grain crops, primarily on marginal lands in dry areas in temperate, subtropical and tropical regions. The most important species are pearl millet, finger millet, proso millet and foxtail millet (see Annex I for types of millet). Pearl millet accounts for almost half of global millet production. It is the most important species of millet both in terms of cropped area and contributions to food security in regions of Africa and Asia that can produce little else. Finger millet is widely produced in the cooler, higher-altitude regions of Africa and Asia both as a food crop and as a preferred input for traditional beer. Proso millet is important for bird seed in the developed countries and for food in parts of Asia. Foxtail millet is important in parts of Asia (mainly China) and Europe. The other species (barnyard, kodo and little millets, the fonios and teff) are locally important food grains restricted to smaller regions or individual countries. The various species differ in their physical characteristics, quality attributes, soil and climatic requirements and growth duration.

Developing countries, mainly in Asia and Africa, account for about 94 percent of global output, estimated at some 28 million tons (1992-94 average, Table 1). Of this, pearl millet accounts for about 15 million tons, foxtail millet for 5 million tons, proso millet for 4 million tons and finger millet for over 3 million tons (Annex II). Almost all millet is produced by small-scale farmers for household consumption and localized trade. Pearl millet, in particular, is critically important for food security in some of the world's hottest, driest cultivated areas.

Very limited quantities of millet are produced in the developed countries, primarily for a high-value specialty market as bird seed. Correspondingly, only limited quantities of millet are recorded in international trade.

Statistical documentation for millet is generally poor and fragmentary. Few national statistics distinguish between the various botanical species. Some countries combine millet figures with those of sorghum and other cereals, and include millet under the general category "other coarse grains". Many of the statistics are only rough estimates; analyses derived from these data should, therefore, be treated with caution.

Millets are better adapted to dry, infertile soils than most other crops, and are therefore often cultivated under extremely harsh conditions - for example, high temperatures, low and erratic precipitation, short growing seasons and acidic and infertile soils with poor water-holding capacity. Most millets have strong, deep rooting systems and short life cycles, and can grow rapidly when moisture is available. As a result, they can survive and reliably produce small quantities of grain in areas where mean annual precipitation is as low as 300 mm. This compares with a minimum water requirement of 400 mm for sorghum and 500-600 mm for maize. Some species (pearl and proso millets) also appear to tolerate higher temperatures than sorghum and maize, although they do not tolerate long drought periods as well as sorghum.

Millet production systems

In most parts of the world, millet is grown as a subsistence crop for local consumption. Commercial millet production is risky, especially in Africa, because the absence of large market outlets means that fluctuations in output cause significant price fluctuations, particularly in areas where millet is the main food crop. Apart from grain production, millet is also cultivated for grazing, green fodder or silage. Livestock are an important component of most millet production systems, and millet crop residues contribute significantly to fodder supplies. Some popular landrace varieties in India, for example, are over 3-meter tall, and are valued for the large amount of fodder they provide, even though grain yields are relatively low¹.

[¹. Dry millet stover often has a lower total fodder value than stover from sorghum or other grains because the stalks are lignified and have a lower digestible energy content. However, it is often the only fodder available in areas where millet is grown.]

In developing countries, millet cropping systems tend to be extensive, with limited application of improved technologies, except in some of the more commercialized farming regions in India. These crops are usually grown without irrigation or chemical fertilizer, on light, well-drained soils that are poor in organic matter content. When supplementary or full irrigation is available, farmers prefer to cultivate more remunerative crops, although exceptions occur in some regions (such as Gujarat in India) where there is seasonally high demand for pearl millet crop residues as fodder for milch animals. Short-duration millet cultivars are also grown under irrigation, before or after higher-value crops, in areas where the season is long enough to permit double cropping.

For these reasons, and others discussed in the section on Production Trends, millet yields are usually much lower than yields of other cereals (which are grown under more favourable conditions). Although millet occupies about 5 percent of the world's cereal area, it accounts for only 1.5 percent of world cereal production. Furthermore, yields are highly variable from one season to another. In Niger, for example, average pearl millet yields fell from 510 kg/ha in 1988 to 240 kg/ha in 1990, then increased to 360 kg/ha in 1992.

Table 1. Millet area, yield and production by region.¹

		Area (million ha)			Yield (t/ha)			Production (million tons)
		1979-81	1989-91	1992-94	1979-81	1989-91	1992-94	1979-81	1989-91	1992-94
Developing countries		34.70	34.40	35.60	0.68	0.73	0.75	23.67	25.00	26.60
Africa		11.50	15.80	18.50	0.67	0.66	0.61	7.68	10.46	11.36
	Northern Africa	1.10	1.05	1.96	0.40	0.18	0.28	0.44	0.19	0.55
	Sudan	1.10	1.05	1.95	0.40	0.18	0.28	0.44	0.19	0.55
Western Africa		8.30	12.60	14.00	0.67	0.68	0.64	5.52	8.55	9.00
	Burkina Faso	0.80	1.21	1.24	0.49	0.54	0.64	0.39	0.65	0.79
	Ghana	0.18	0.19	0.20	0.64	0.64	0.82	0.12	0.12	0.17
	Cote d'Ivoire	0.06	0.08	0.08	0.58	0.61	0.84	0.04	0.05	0.07
	Mali	0.64	1.19	1.20	0.72	0.69	0.61	0.46	0.82	0.73
	Niger	3.01	4.19	4.87	0.44	0.34	0.38	1.31	1.43	1.86
	Nigeria	2.40	4.50	5.20	1.04	1.04	0.89	2.50	4.67	4.62
	Senegal	0.93	0.90	0.89	0.60	0.64	0.61	0.56	0.58	0.55
	Togo	0.12	0.13	0.13	0.36	0.51	0.50	0.04	0.07	0.06
Central Africa		0.63	0.79	0.93	0.59	0.51	0.48	0.37	0.40	0.45
	Cameroon	0.13	0.06	0.05	0.75	1.06	1.01	0.10	0.06	0.06
	Chad	0.36	0.54	0.59	0.50	0.40	0.47	0.18	0.22	0.28
Eastern Africa		1.46	1.33	1.46	0.89	0.97	0.91	1.31	1.29	1.33
	Ethiopia	0.23	0.25	0.25	0.90	0.95	1.05	0.20	0.24	0.27
	Kenya	0.08	0.10	0.09	1.05	0.67	0.65	0.08	0.07	0.06
	Tanzania	0.45	0.23	0.32	0.80	0.94	0.71	0.36	0.22	0.23
	Uganda	0.30	0.38	0.41	1.59	1.53	1.57	0.47	0.58	0.63
	Zimbabwe	0.35	0.27	0.25	0.43	0.50	0.27	0.15	0.14	0.07
Southern Africa		0.09	0.11	0.21	0.41	0.49	0.18	0.04	0.06	0.04
Asia		22.98	18.29	16.99	0.69	0.79	0.89	15.75	14.45	15.17
Near East		0.19	0.18	0.15	1.02	0.58	0.78	0.19	0.10	0.12
Far East		22.79	18.41	16.84	0.68	0.78	0.89	15.56	14.35	15.05
	China	3.98	2.25	1.90	1.45	1.74	1.93	5.79	3.92	3.67
	India	17.84	15.19	13.95	0.51	0.64	0.77	9.19	9.76	10.70
	Myanmar	0.18	0.17	0.20	0.45	0.69	0.66	0.08	0.12	0.13
	Nepal	0.12	0.20	0.21	0.99	1.16	1.14	0.12	0.23	0.24
	Pakistan	0.51	0.44	0.43	0.50	0.41	0.44	0.25	0.18	0.19
Central America and the Carribean		0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
South America		0.20	0.04	0.04	1.21	1.49	1.53	0.25	0.06	0.06
	Argentina	0.20	0.04	0.04	1.21	1.49	1.53	0.25	0.06	0.06
Developed countries		2.94	4.13	2.49	0.65	0.88	0.72	1.93	3.64	1.79
	Australia	0.03	0.03	0.03	1.00	0.88	1.05	0.03	0.03	0.03
	United States	0.09	0.15	0.15	1.20	1.20	1.20	0.11	0.18	0.18
	CIS2	2.79	3.92	2.27	0.63	0.87	0.68	1.76	3.40	1.54
World		37.60	38.60	38.10	0.68	0.74	0.74	25.70	28.65	28.38

1. Each figure is a 3-year average for the respective period, e.g., 1979-81.
2. Until 1991, area of the former USSR.
Source: FAO

Crop distribution

In Asia, millet is restricted almost exclusively to two countries, India and China, although Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan also produce small quantities. India is the world's largest producer, harvesting about 11 million tons per year, nearly 40 percent of the world's output (Fig. 1). Pearl millet, which accounts for about two-thirds of India's millet production, is grown in the drier areas of the country, mainly in the states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Finger millet is produced mainly in the state of Karnataka, but also in Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. It is also the most important millet in Nepal and Bhutan. China produces about 3.7 million tons of millet (mainly foxtail) per year, largely in the provinces of Hebei, Shanxi and Shandong.

Millet production in Africa (Fig. 2) is distributed among a much larger number of countries, notably Nigeria (over 40 percent of the regional output), Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal and Sudan (Table 1). Pearl millet is grown along the southern peripheries of the Sahara (i.e., the Sahelian countries and the northern parts of the coastal countries in Western Africa) and in the drier areas of Eastern and Southern Africa. Finger millet production is concentrated in Eastern and Southern Africa, where the leading producers are Uganda and Tanzania. As a grain crop, tef is largely confined to Ethiopia. Small quantities of white fonio are grown throughout sub-Sahelian Western Africa, most importantly in Mali. Black fonio is grown in isolated pockets in Nigeria, Togo and Benin. Guinea millet is cultivated only on the Fouta-Djallon plateau of northwestern Guinea and adjacent Sierra Leone. Foxtail and proso millets are very minor crops in Africa, but are cultivated to a limited extent in Kenya and other upland areas in Eastern Africa. Kodo millet is commonly harvested from wild forms in Western Africa, but cultivated forms of this "ditch millet" are only found in Asia. In Latin America, millet production is confined to a small area in Argentina.

Figure 1. The world's major millet producers.

Figure 2. Relative importance of millet worldwide.

Among the developed countries, millet cultivation (almost entirely proso millet) is concentrated in the CIS, particularly in the Russian Federation, Kazhakastan and the Ukraine. Production in North America, Australia and Europe is extremely limited. In some countries, millet is sown as a catch crop when sowing conditions for the main crop are unfavourable. However, even in such situations the grain is sometimes left unharvested and the area simply grazed by livestock.