A short history of millet and how we are recognizing their importance in the modern context The history of food, especially in the Indian context, will be left incomplete without giving due importance to millet. As I explore slower and healthier lifestyle of humans, I realize that some of the most beautiful practices have been left behind. And for working towards a better future, we’ll need to reclaim some of these values. Millet's provide us an interesting case study. Millet's and the history Millet's are a group of highly variable small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for human food and as fodder. There is evidence of the cultivation of millet in the Korean Peninsula dating to the Middle Jeulmun Pottery Period (around 3,500–2,000BC). In India, millets have been mentioned in some of the oldest Yajurveda texts, identifying foxtail millet ( priyangava ), Barnyard millet ( aanava ) and black finger millet ( shyaamaka ), thus i