Although millet represents less than 2 percent of world cereal utilization, it is an important staple in a large number of countries in the semi-arid tropics, where low precipitation and poor soils limit the cultivation of other major food crops. Millet is a high-energy, nutritious food, especially recommended for children, convalescents and the elderly. Several food preparations are made from millet, which differ between countries and even between different parts of a country. These consist primarily of porridge or pancake-like flat bread. However, because wholemeal quickly goes rancid, millet flour (prepared by pounding or milling) can be stored only for short periods. Sorghum and millets based health foods can be prepared for creation of demand.  If demand is created, market will develop. You can promote production through clusters making farmer interest groups and further farmer producer companies for ensuring marketing and other supports.

Dr.Malhotra,good and pertinent reply.

Sorghum and Millet are very important cereals and are (especially sorghum) very tolerant to long dry conditions, typical of semi-arid tropical areas. Apart from the many different forms that the cereals can be processed and sold, feeding on them can very well enhance productivity as they are very rich source of energy.

However, Sorghum has very high amounts of pytate and tannins that are anti-nutritional. It is therefore important that sorghum processing methods are able to reduce tanin contents to safe levels.

At presnt processing of food grains in India is low especialy in millets and sorghum.It is one of the reasons for decrease in the area and prodiition signifcantly over a period of time.Processing of these cereals would increase demand as well as consumption resulting in better price for the produce.If these crops become economically competative,farmers would make all effort to produce them in large quantity which leads to increased production.Infact there is need for processing technology and its popularization.

I agree with Shrishail Dolli ,

Investment in food grain processing is very much needed in developing countries, especially given that, for example, Sorghum has a lot of anti-nutritional factors but also to make them competitive in the market.

In Uganda, a rudimental processing technique exist where sorghum and millet are processed locally (by heaping, sometimes on soil, to ferment) and later used to make local beers, which also competes with the need to use the cereals to enhance household food consumption, and securtity!

 Mr.Dera ,I have come across a large range of innovative products  preparation technologies  developed from millets in the website of Indian Institute of Millets Research(IIMR),Hyderabad.Please refer to the following site/link.

www.millets.res.in/technologies/technologies_at_glance.pdf

Yes, sorghum and millets were once staple food for major population of India and Africa, have now vanished from food plates due to supply of rice on subsidised price and low production of these crops.However they have great health advantage., so efforts are made through different projects to strengthen forward linkage.The processing technology should suit to small scale as they are grown mostly by small and marginal farmers.

Processing and marketing will create  value added products, the demand for which will induce producers to produce more.

ICT enabled Advisories on Good Agricultural Practices can enhance crop production and ICT enabled Value Chain on Sorghum and Millet Produces/Products can result adequate markets and thus resulting in rise in farmers' income .

As referred by A. Subba Rao, there is potential of preparing various food items from the millets as such and more so by mixing with non-millet cereals. In the need to save water, it is urgently required to enhance area under millet crops. The support price of such crops is also not effective and is not backed by procurement in most areas. Moreover, farmers being small, need to be organized as SHGs to improve bargaining power for bettering prices.   

As pointed out by Drs.Malhotra ,Dolli and Olum,in the recent past the millets are promoted as nutritional cereals including  correction of malnutrition in children.One can see several nutritional products in supermarkets.Dr.Joginder Singh has rightly pointed out the need for fixing the supporting price and other incentives  to farmers.SHGs also help in highlighting some issues concerning the promotion of millets growing like production,processing and value addition and marketing.As pointed out by Madaswamy one can use ICT tools in marketing and in highlighting the nutritional value of the millet based products.Documenting and adoption of good agricultural practices can save the costly inputs,increase the efficieney of utilization of the inputs  and safeguard  environment.

Good elaborations Dr. Rao

Crop processing is a marketing activity wherein additional cost are incurred on the premise that profit may be generated. Like all agricultural marketing activity, the main goal is effectively transfer the goods from the farm gate to the end user. The term effective means that the marketing activities will both beneficial to the farmers and end-users. In most cases, processing activites are regarded as value-adding activities. This usually includes storing, cleaning, milling and alike. Though, value-adding can be translated to a higher price, it must be considered that when crops are processed, their perishability usually decreases. This means that seasonal variability of the crops lessen and price may not fluctuate through out the years. Consumers will most likely consider the value-addition if the produce will be available during off-season. One more thing consider is that processing may increase the quality of the produce. An increase on the quality of the produce may increase the utility of the product; hence, consumers will still buy your product even though price increases. 

Processing and marketing will help in supply chain management, and value addition. That will create demand and producer definitely will enhance its production.

Thanks