Traditional Knowledge of Nutrition Ages Better! - Millets Malt (Sattu) to the Rescue - Serve the Under-served

India is known for its rich crop biodiversity. The Indica-genealogical race-line of Rice is known to have been originated from the foothills of the Himalayas. Just like how Quinoa, Chia have become powerhouse staples from South America, now across the world, India has also been a traditional storehouse of various kinds of Millets, Minor Cereals and Pseudo-cereals too.

Previous article had mentioned how our initiative Jaivik Haat is trying to better its social contribution by working to create Millet Malt (Sattu) to supplement nutrition of migrants, Urban Shelter homes and economically challenged section of Delhi NCR.

Here we share progress on that front on how we are using Traditional Knowledge to create an end-to-end value chain from farm to field - using Millets as the basis. Reader will find a business case of how we worked upon the value chain for millets and going forward how farmers, processors, transparent-intermediaries and consumers link to close the supply chain with traceability and transparency. We also show that these are not expensive and niche as they have been deemed to be. It is possible to work with the right set of people yet make the produce available at prices suitable to start for the bottom of the pyramid (economically challenged sector) with the desire to serve the purpose of the axiom propounded by Swami Vivekanand the Daridra Narayan. At the time of this pandemic crisis even, it has only proved to us (and perhaps also to the reader) that it is a myth that Sustainable Food Systems lead to inflated prices and niche markets!

Millets are know well known as a source of deep nutrition and curative supplemental inputs as foods. Having lost favor to various grains, wheat and rice, and once known as only as Bird-Feed - a lot of work by Nutritionist, Civil Society, Public agencies, Passionate diversity promoters (such as ourselves ;-) !!) - Millets are making a strong comeback. Off-late (in the last few years) Chefs of big hotels have also started taking a liking to it, and it is not uncommon to find a few dishes in various restaurants being based out of millets too.

A good reference compendium for the purpose, traditional knowledge, nutrition based on millets is here -

In India the government also undertakes formal research in Millet production and nutritional promotion through the Indian Institute of Millet Research -

In 2017, the National Institute of Nutrition in India published a rather delightful compendium of Indian Food Composition Tables. This is, to date, a master guide to refer to base nutritional values for various primary foods in India especially Millets. Take a look how they fare at large here (pp 41, 71, 101, 131, 151, 209 etc )

With our brief on the background on Millets thus established, now lets discuss how we came about the value chain thus far. If one recalls we set out basic principles in trying to work on solutions for the economically challenged sector of Delhi/NCR urbanscapes. The moot question we posed to ourselves -

"Can we develop a high nutrition-low cost food value chain which will serve a large consumer base of urban migrants, poor and homeless?"

The answer thus far is yes, however, in hindsight with the affirmative assumption the next series of questions posed were -

1. Per traditional knowledge (since in principle we always look back to look forward ;-) ) - what nutritive source can serve the sector of interest well? The answer resoundingly was millets since they have always been available in plenty in India, a nutritionally rich, relatively easy to grow, bio-diverse and well.... traditional!!
2. Can the sector beneficiaries relate to the source of the meal? The answer was yes, most of the migrants, laborers, destitute in Urban centers have rural roots hence they will be able to relate to millets nutritionally as the source of the meal.
3. What should be the form of consumption for the sector beneficiaries? Now this is a very tricky question and the answer was the challenge to solve for the most efficient form of Value Processing and product design. This is described in this document going forward.
4. What should be the price of such a product? Clearly it has to be priced considering the cost net returns of nutrition per person for the sector beneficiaries, there are no known priors to such price determination, so we chose to follow "True Price Accounting" to arrive at the lowest possible pricing system. At the moment the prices are as high as INR 9.28/- (USD 12 cents) per beneficiary for 1 time consumption of the malt. Just intuitively, is that not cheap enough already? Prices from this point only reduce with increasing volumes of manufacturing.
5. How should the product be packaged considering - manufacturing efficiency, transportation costs and form, net costs impacting final price, margins for transparent intermediaries, ease of handling by final distributing agencies at urban shelter homes, usage by final beneficiaries and finally wastage and pollution cased by packing discards? The answers to these questions have to do with costs, pragmatic availability of material at the times of lockdown of suppliers and the endless desire to somehow find better solutions at lower prices.

Form of Consumption

Millets can be consumed in various forms for nutritional intake. In India, they are cooked as Rice, ground as flour to make rotis (breads), consumed as gruel, value added to cookies and snacks, other traditional methods like steamed dumplings - such as mudde. Almost all millet seed has to be dehulled before consumption and that has always been a tricky problem to solve. In this article we will not focus on this, but suffice to say that the grain has always been traditionally used in India through hand pounding - in a rural community setup, where only the grain needed for consumption was pounded for preparation - but presents clear and present challenges in terms of mass production (factory systems) and marketing chains - thus form and packaging. Typically millets, in raw or 1st level processing have a decent shelf life and do not spoil easily, but they do have a shelf life nonetheless.

A good reference for the reasoning and purpose of processing millets meanwhile can be referred to here where the trade-off to dehulling is explained with reasons in good detail (p 61-71).

Each of these modes of consumption requires a certain effort, as dehulled whole it has to be boiled - a process which requires kitchens and manpower, as ground powder which to be kneaded as dough and baked or steamed before consumption again requiring kitchen infrastructure and manpower.

The distribution agencies are ill afforded such manpower, kitchen facilities and processing before serving to the beneficiaries at the times of the lockdown. Thus while the form of the product may be easy to process, pack and transport it will be challenging to handle in the field as well will add costs to the final delivery of nutritional access to beneficiaries.

How can millets be consumed 'en masse' at low costs distributed delivery with ease?

The question was answered with a bit of history, our organisation Jaivik Haat was already mentoring and assisting with marketing, product design and price discovery with a startup manufacturing firm which was processing millets into malts. The firm run by young food technologist had opened a processing unit in Delhi, incubated by ZTM and BPD Unit of Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI-PUSA). Remarkable work on making a 5 millet malt having worked out the correct proportions of the millets to use to arrive at this nutritional intake -

5 types of millets - Finger, Foxtail, Pearl, Little and Barnyard - mixed in a proportion to allow a healthy Average Daily Dietary Intake for Indians. Comparing this with the official government Recommended Dietary Allowing of Indians - 2011 offers interesting analysis.

One pouch (1 serving) of the malt offers - 27 grams of 5 millet malt and compares as follows to Recommended Daily Average (RDA) for Indian Population (based on RDA for Man - Heavy Work - with the assumption that the sector beneficiaries will require such intake - All values normalized to %age of daily RDA)

Energy - 2.9% of RDA

Dietary Fiber - 7.1% of RDA

Proteins - 4.2% of RDA

Vitamins (Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin averaged) - 17% of RDA

Minerals (Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Sodium averaged) - 3.9% of RDA

Before you say "This appears low"? Hang on a bit!! One must remember that these are over actual quantities of 27gms of malt and the sector beneficiaries have a diet profile, which to satiate ones hunger requires a psychological approach. Typically economically challenged, heavy working individuals have a heavy diet of Rotis, Rice, Dals, Vegetables, eggs and Meats. A combination of these in large proportion satiates a one time sitting hunger of the individual. In the case of millets, since they are complex nutritional release if they are had in similar quantities in one meal sitting, then tend to cause lethargy even. Thus the recommended intake mechanism for Millets is in small/suitable portion throughout the day.

The packing of 27 grams has also to do with trade-offs in terms of pricing of the final product as well as ease of consumption. Also, the idea is not to replace a whole meal for the beneficiary, which will otherwise satiate hunger, it is to supplement nutrition with added, vitamins, minerals in addition to a basic meal of rice and dal.

Can the portions per individual go up? Of course it can, instead of one pouch say 4 could be consumed too! However, the choice is left to the serving organisation as well as the eventual beneficiary.

This is especially useful for those migrants and destitute who have to carry their families, lock-stock and lug large portions of grain/food for along the way, especially those with children who cannot afford to buy milk along the way. This may as well be a substitute for kids who can be easily fed this with water too.

"वैष्णव जन तो तेने कहिये जे पीड परायी जाणे रे" / vaiṣṇava jana to tene kahiye je pīḍa parāyī jāṇe re / Call those people Vaishnav who, Feel the pain of others

Going Forward

The entrepreneur sourced raw millets for malt processing from Distant suppliers in Southern India. Closer to Delhi NCR in the mountains of Uttarakhand Millets are also available from PGS certified organic growers group as well as other aggregators. Jaivik Haat has assisted the entrepreneur in sourcing a batch of millets for processing. Going forward the quantity of raw material, its landed costs, quality (if it is has much grit, stones, dirt then that is as much cost of cleaning labor in Delhi) will determine operational efficiency to keep cost of production low.

Also currently the packaging is recyclable foil material, this is clearly not going to be sustainable in the long-run for the simple fact that in India waste segregation for this packaging material is not sorted well enough. Perhaps there is a trade-off in shelf life, phyto-degradation of product, recyclable packaging material and costs etc which is to be optimized going forward. Packaging also is being worked to allow for carry-on dry rations to be handed to migrants walking long distance back to home who have to carry dry grain for cooking of high weight and volume. Consider that a 250gm pouch will be sufficient for enhancing nutritional intake for 1 full day for 4 members of a family (@60gms of intake per day per person). However, this is being optimized in manufacturing in terms of net costs and lack of availability of material in this lockdown at the time of writing this article. It is a problem, though, which appears solvable in the near term.

In addition, millets can also be malted with pseudo-cereals such as Amanranthus, Buckwheat to produce better malts for consumption. Trials of various kinds of grains and cereals are needed to determine good proportion and nutritional intake based on seasonal availability of produce. In North India - Sorghum, Pearl Millet, Barnyard (Mountain based farming) Finger Millet are easily available. In addition Amaranthus is a good source of nutrition too, so are various kinds of traditional indigenous folk-rice varieties (black/red/brown etc), buckwheat is available in season only and is prone to quicker spoilage. Thus considering other raw grain supplies, more work on the value chain can be done keeping in mind operational efficiency.

Protein content in millets can be enhanced by sprouting them and drying before processing them too (with the exception of a few such as Pearl Millet, which is tricky for its Phytate and Oxalate content, but a solvable problem in nutrition nonetheless!). However this will require additional steps in factory processing and is something we need to discover going forward in future.

One of the added advantages of working with a value chain even in this time of crisis is the added side benefits. The manufacturing factory in question was lying vacant for want of production orders and input supply. With this the factory has also started to give wages and employment even now!! But sshhh! You did not hear about this 'benefit' from us!

Lastly, given the value chain, benefits to farmers and consumers, the social cause, the price, cost and many other added advantages to this Sustainable Food System Value Chain - it gives reason to believe the strength of the latent value of localized traditional knowledge system that exist in our wonder country, Bharat. In case you would like to connect any organisation (donor, distributing agency or charity) who is willing to join hands and serve this cause please feel free to connect them to any of the following.

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Thanks for reading this far! If you liked what you read do leave a comment or two (words of encouragement go a long way in these strange times, strangely!). Leaving you with an impression of this little one with a glass of Millet Sattu!, who is reason enough for us to be doing what we do, with 'Love in these times of Corona!'

Thanks to Janpahal, Uday Foundation and friends associated with Sehwag Foundation for assisting with distribution of Millet Sattu till the time of writing this article. Few impressions of the distribution done to about 500+ people in Delhi NCR thus far are here.