Onlykashmir.in News Desk
The Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, in collaboration with the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences and the Kheti Virasat Mission, brought together over 750 participants at Shalimar Convention Centre for a National Seminar on “Millets for One Health,” a gathering that placed nutrition, climate-resilient agriculture and sustainable food systems at the centre of discussion for Jammu and Kashmir’s farming community.
The seminar’s scale reflected the growing institutional weight being placed behind millets as both a nutritional and ecological priority, with roughly 350 farmers and Farmer Producer Organisation members travelling in from districts across the Union Territory to interact directly with scientists, medical professionals, faculty, entrepreneurs and policymakers. Padma Shri awardee Dr Khader Vali, widely known across India as the Millet Man for his decades of advocacy around reviving traditional grains, attended as chief guest and used the platform to stress the nutritional density and ecological resilience of millets compared to water-intensive staple crops, urging a return of these traditional grains to everyday diets.
Vice Chancellor of SKUAST-K, Prof Nazir Ahmad Ganai, framed the seminar’s significance around three pillars: nutritional security, crop diversification and climate resilience, calling for concerted investment in strengthening the millet value chain through better processing infrastructure, value addition, branding, marketing support and entrepreneurship opportunities for growers. Director of SKIMS, Prof M Ashraf Ganie, brought the medical dimension into focus, highlighting the direct relationship between food choices, nutrition outcomes and long-term human health, and calling for closer interdisciplinary collaboration between the region’s agricultural and medical institutions going forward.
Sessions through the day extended into food safety protocols, ecological agriculture practices, soil health management, biodiversity conservation, millet processing technologies and innovative millet-based product development, alongside packaging, branding and market-access strategies aimed at helping small growers scale up. The presence of a large farmer and FPO contingent gave the seminar a practical, ground-level character, with direct interaction sessions allowing cultivators to raise questions on everything from crop management to post-harvest processing directly with subject experts.
The programme concluded with a call to deepen farmer-scientist-medical-industry linkages and to accelerate the transfer of scientific knowledge and emerging technologies to farming communities across Jammu and Kashmir. A formal vote of thanks was presented by Dr Anjum Bashir of SKIMS Soura, bringing the day-long seminar to a close on a note that organisers described as a foundation for continued collaboration on millet-driven food security in the region.
