Columbia Global Centers | Mumbai invites you to a public lecture by Professor Ruth DeFries where she will compare nutritional and environmental outcomes across Indian cereals.
India’s transition from a rice-importing to an exporting country over the last fifty years is a remarkable achievement. The Green Revolution’s success relied heavily on increased production of rice and wheat at the expense of lower-yielding traditional coarse cereals such as pearl millet (bajra), sorghum (jowar), and finger millet (ragi). The Indian diet has consequently shifted away from coarse cereals. Our interdisciplinary research combines long-term agricultural and climate data sets with models to compare water demand, climate resilience, greenhouse gas emissions, and supply of macro and micro nutrients across the cereals. Results points towards beneficial environmental and nutritional outcomes from coarse cereals compared with polished rice. Increased production of coarse cereals could help alleviate India’s substantial prevalence of micro nutrient deficiencies, reduce water demand, and enhance farmers’ resilience to an uncertain climate.
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