About the event

Communities across the world have depended on millets, a group of cereal grains, as a source of nutrition and sustenance for generations. Despite the potential to address food and nutritional security, millet growth and consumption have been declining. Of late, the importance of millet has been recognised as critical in addressing food security, especially under the current climate change scenarios. The UN FAO has designated 2023 as the International Year of Millets and various initiatives have been made by national governments and development organisations to promote this important crop. In this context, the Himalayan University Consortium (HUC) is spearheading a campaign to help bring wider awareness about millet production and its significance in addressing food security among policymakers, the media, and the wider public. This writeshop is a follow up to the recently conducted masterclass on food security assessment and will bring together senior-level policymakers, academics, and other stakeholders from the Eastern Himalayan region (Northeast India, Bhutan, and Nepal) to develop policy briefs on millets for each region. The writeshop will be held in Kathmandu in conjunction with the meeting of HUC’s Thematic Working Group on Mountain Agriculture, which will set priorities for research collaboration, capacity building, and curriculum uptake among HUC member universities in the region.  

Objectives

• Build the capacity of selected country representatives to make concrete, policymaker-focused recommendations relevant to the national or sub-national contexts
• Provide support to develop policy briefs which highlight policy, research, and knowledge gaps, as well as barriers and bottlenecks to millet revival and integration in Himalayan food systems
• Bring together academics and policymakers to facilitate knowledge exchange, establish common understanding around millet production, and produce three country-specific national policy briefs
• Build political awareness on the importance of millets from the perspective of food security and nutrition and indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage

Expected outcomes

• Participant understanding around millet production and marketing will be established
• Three country-specific policy briefs will be developed; the briefs will be concise and action oriented.

About the organisers

The Himalayan University Consortium is a network of 90 member universities in the eight Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) countries and outside of the HKH region. The Consortium aims to foster regional and international collaboration in innovative research and education for sustainable mountain futures in the region. Its Secretariat resides at the International Centre of Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu. The University of Reading’s (UK) School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, founded in 1892, has expertise spanning agriculture, animal science, international development, environmental management, food marketing and consumer behaviour. In the latest Research Excellence Framework, the School's research was internationally recognised, with 91% of work in international development rated as internationally excellent, along with 80% of work in agriculture and agri-food economics. As part of the Green Resilient Agricultural Productive Ecosystems (GRAPE) project, ICIMOD is taking the lead in implementing GRAPE Field of Action (FA) 2 – action research – in Karnali and Sudurpashchim provinces of Nepal. GRAPE is jointly planned and financed by the European Union, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).  

Agenda