Health conscious citizens fancy a new trend of organic millets

Vizag: As the people are growing conscious about maintaining a healthy diet, the millet seem to have taken to the charts at a decent number of households and the new trend is obvious for the increasing footfalls at the store that are selling millets within the city.

The traders at the MVP Rythu Bazaar and the say that they have been doing a good business for the past few months.

“Even the high prices are no deterrent even to the average middle class customer. We have been buying jonnalu and ragulu grown through natural farming practices for the past few years. Since the past few months, we have started purchasing ‘chiru dhanyalu’ too as they have high nutritive value. Protein deficiency is growing among vegetarians. I have been watching several programmes on Youtube and learnt about the benefits of millets,” says K.V.P.S. Achari, a resident of Sector-III, MVP Colony.

Marika Shankar of Killoguda, who has been in the business of selling millets at the Rythu Bazaar for the last 14 years, said that “In the past, customers were asking only for a few natural produces such as jonnalu, ragulu, pesalu, ulavalu and bobbarlu. Now, we are unable to cater to the spurt in demand for millets.”

Devullu Pachari, the secretary of Sanjeevini and ZBNF State resource person. Had said that, “We have been promoting organic products since 2001. There are more than 580 organic farmers who are growing vegetables and pulses in the Agency. They do not use fertilisers and chemical pesticides. We have opened an organic products outlet at the Tribal Museum at Araku recently to promote organic products and millet recipes in a big way.”

“The five millet varieties – korralu, samalu, arikalu, andu korralu and oodalu – apart from thati bellam (palm jaggery), kusuma nune (sass flower oil), coconut oil, olive oil, groundnut oil, honey and cow ghee are in high demand since June this year,” says Ms. Sravani of Sumaja Ecowellness, an organic outlet, which has three branches in the city.