With the premise that people in the earlier times used millets in their regular diet for a healthy life, the State Government was keen on bringing people to adopt such a lifestyle change.
To give an impetus to this, it was funding and implementing schemes and programmes to motivate farmers to increase production of millets and also enable them make value-added products out of millets.
A two-day training on ‘Millet Production and Value Addition’ was held here at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University for farmers and self help group women, which focussed on knowledge transfer and skill demonstrations.
The Department of Millets of the university conducted the programme. The participants were encouraged to opt for millet growing as it required less water and was best suited for conditions of water scarcity. They were also asked to focus on marketing techniques so that the produce was sold to the right person at the right place. Importance of pricing for value-added products was also stressed.
They were told to maintain the expenditure record for each crop to assess the actual profit gained. Trainees from Coimbatore, Erode, Dindigul and Karur, were exposed to critical technologies for enhancing the productivity in millet crops, viz., sorghum, pearl millet, ragi and other small millets. A field visit was also part of the training.
Preparation of value-added products using small millets was taught at the Post Harvest Technology Centre of the university.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/motivating-farmers-to-grow-millets/article5651145.ece