During the G20 summit in New Delhi on Saturday, the hosts served the heads of state and government a vegetarian gala dinner. The meal consisted of a jackfruit galette with rice and millet chips. The choice for these plant-based dishes has a political and economic background.
As a main course, US President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the other guests were served small millet chips, alongside a jackfruit galette with glazed wild mushrooms and Kerala rice with curry leaves. The millet trio was completed with millet chips with yogurt balls on the starter and cardamom-millet pudding for dessert.
Millet cultivation has a tradition of thousands of years in India, but this has declined since the 1960s at the expense of high-yielding wheat and rice varieties. Since then, millet has long been considered the basis for poor people’s food. Since taking office in 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu, has been trying to expand grain cultivation again.
Millet grows twice as fast as wheat, but requires only 30 percent as much water as rice. The Indian plan currently seems to be going in the right direction: in 2021, the value of exported grain rose to the equivalent of almost 60 million euros. This is a significantly higher value compared to previous years.
Source: Krone
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