W.H.Auden famously stated: thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
The importance of water is not something up for democratic dialogue, neither is the water crisis cropping up over the world.
WaterAid India’s Beneath the Surface: The State of the World's Water 2019 report gives us these numbers: producing one kilogram (kg) of rice requires about 2,800 litres of water, while a kg of wheat requires 1,654 litres of water. On average, millets use 2.5 times lesser water than rice. Since there are various kinds of millets, the exact figures vary but the message is clear: growing millets means less water usage and greater nutritional security. But is that all there is to the story?
I remember an old incident about someone asking a teacher of mine something like, “what would it take to develop oneself fully or to reach their full potential?” My teacher replied by saying, “think of a bucket in which you have some detergent and water. You have a dirty shirt and now you wish to wash it. When you dip the shirt in the detergent water, you will see a kind of bubble that the shirt forms, as air fills into a portion of it. In order to suppress it, you would push that part of the shirt and another part of the shirt bubbles up. In this manner, you finally figure out that at no time does the shirt remain fully submerged in the detergent water, unless you hold it down with both your hands. Then you further realise you can’t hold it like that for long so you reach a compromise, and work on it as it keeps bubbling up and down the various parts of itself. Finally, you do end up with a clean shirt but you cannot forgo the process.”
The reason I remembered this story was to illustrate the much larger and complex subject at hand: sustainable development and climate change mitigation. Just as the various parts of the shirt keep bubbling up, we encounter various parts of the climate change “shirt” that bubble up. For example, you cannot address afforestation without addressing population questions such as where would villagers/city folks be displaced. You cannot address soil crisis without addressing water crisis, and you cannot address water crisis without addressing population numbers and people’s needs. So, as we tackle the various challenges that the modern world lays out before us, our best opportunity is to then look at the holistic solutions that can address most, if not all aspects of the crises at hand. Metaphorically speaking, we need to look at the “two hands that can hold the shirt down under the water until it is clean”. Growing Millets can be one such solution. How is it, you ask? A good place to start would be to check out the previous blogs here and here.
Scientists have also been backing the importance of millets in addressing water related challenges across the spectrum. A more technical term used is called the “water footprint”. In simple words, it is the amount of water required for a specific unit (such as one kilo) of edible commodity.
The following excerpt from NPR in an article shows us the work of scientists on this matter:
There are many factors that make millets more sustainable as crops. Compare the amount of water needed to grow rice with that for millets. One rice plant requires nearly 2.5 times the amount of water required by a single millet plant of most varieties, according to the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid (ICRISAT), a global research organization helping to make millets more popular. That's why millets are primarily grown in arid regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Millets can also withstand higher temperatures. "Crops like rice and wheat cannot tolerate temperatures more than 38 degrees Centigrade (100.4 Fahrenheit), while millets can tolerate temperatures of more than 46 degrees C (115 F)," says S.K Gupta, the principal scientist at the pearl millet breeding program at ICRISAT. "They can also grow in saline soil." Millets could therefore be an important solution for farmers grappling with climate change – sea level rise (which can cause soil salinity to increase), heat waves, droughts and floods.
Another expert from ORF (Observer Research Foundation) has stated in an article:
Looking at the water security, millets require almost six times less water for growth (20 com) as compared to rice that requires average rainfall of 120-140 cm. The maturation time for certain millets is 45-70 days, half to that of rice (120-140 days). Being a C4 group of cereals, millets convert more carbon dioxide to oxygen, contributing in mitigating climate change. Millets can endure extremely high temperatures to drought to salinity making it a climate resilient crop.
According to smartfood.org, a new report has found that as much as 300 billion cubic metres of water annually by 2050 can be saved, if India starts moving away from water-intensive crops such as Rice and Wheat. The same is seen from the box plot below:
Water footprint is a complete subject in itself and there are quite a few ways to study and understand the concept. For the purpose of our discussion here however, we can suffice with some basic analysis. The boxplot above shows the water footprint for five major cereals that India grew between the years 2005 and 2014. These were maize, millets, rice, sorghum and wheat. The first plot is blue water footprint, second is green water footprint and the third plot is the total water footprint. These numbers basically show us that the production of these cereals increased, and the total water footprint also decreased. This is what we want, as our ideal case scenario. What was problematic however, was that this water footprint came down because the dependency on groundwater and surface water increased. As humans, we are mostly, if not completely, dependent on ground and surface water for our survival, so in that sense, this boxplot is a bit of bad news for us. For those curious to know more, green and blue water footprints can be understood here.
There may be a natural question then – if it makes so much sense to have millet production in terms of water, why are we still so heavily dependent on cereal crops? A very popular study called “More crop per drop : Exploring India's cereal water use since 2005” gives us the answer.
The present production of Millets, especially Jowar and Bajra (Sorghum and Pearl millet respectively) is not sufficient to meet the nutrition demand. This is why the situation at hand is such a delicate one. Policy makers, implementers, farmers, government machinery, consumers – all the players have to ensure that there is a balance between economy, nutrition, water, climate change and ensure that all the while, all changes fit within the existing frameworks and distribution infrastructure.
Of course, the good news is that many organisations – both governmental and private, across the world, are waking up to the clarion call that is Millets. We can all do our part by gradually replacing portions of our rice and wheat-based meals with millets. With efforts of willing people and with a little bit of luck, maybe we can soon enter a world where people need not have to live without love, or without water.