When the millet harvest arrives in the Yimkhiung villages of eastern Nagaland, the celebrations go far beyond the harvest itself.
Families come together for Metümnyo, the community’s post-harvest festival. Millet is brewed into traditional local beverages, shared during thanksgiving rituals, and offered in prayers that mark the end of the agricultural cycle. The village elder, known as thekhiungpu, leads the ceremonies.
Across the hills of Northeast India, traditions like these have been passed down for generations.
Long before India declared millets a national priority and the world embraced them as climate-smart “superfoods”, Indigenous communities in the region had already built their farming systems, festivals, and food traditions around these hardy grains.
For them, millets were never just another crop.
They provided food during uncertain seasons, withstood harsh weather, fed livestock, and brought communities together during festivals and family gatherings.
Now, science is catching up with what these communities have known for centuries.
A 2026 study published in Frontiers documents the rich ethnobotanical knowledge surrounding more than 20 millet species cultivated across the Northeast Himalayan region. The research shows how Indigenous farmers developed diverse millet-based farming systems that supported food security, nutrition, and livelihoods long before climate resilience became part of agricultural policy.
The findings offer an important perspective.
While India’s current millet movement is often described as a revival, much of the Northeast never completely abandoned these grains. Here, millet cultivation is better understood as the continuation of a living tradition.
Built for the hills
Farming has never been easy in the mountains of Northeast India.
Steep slopes, acidic soils, scattered settlements, and unpredictable rainfall demand crops that can thrive under difficult conditions.
Millets have done exactly that for generations.
Unlike water-intensive cereals, they grow well on hill slopes with little irrigation, tolerate poor soils, and can be stored for months without losing quality—an important advantage for villages that often become inaccessible during the monsoon.
According to the Frontiers study, these qualities made millets central to the region’s traditional jhum, or shifting cultivation, system.
Even in Assam, where rice dominates today’s cuisine, hill communities such as the Karbi, Mising, and Bodo continue to preserve millet cultivation for ceremonial foods and traditional brewing practices. Photograph: (North East Network)
Rather than relying on a single crop, Indigenous farmers cultivated finger millet, foxtail millet, Job’s tears, sorghum, and other varieties alongside pulses, vegetables, and root crops. The result was a diverse farming system that strengthened biodiversity while helping households maintain a stable food supply.
The researchers also found that millets served many purposes beyond the kitchen.
They were used as livestock fodder, bird feed, fermented beverages, traditional medicine, and ceremonial foods, forming part of an interconnected agricultural system refined over generations.
Every community has its own grain
Millet traditions vary across the Northeast, with each community adapting the grains to its own landscape, cuisine, and culture.
Among the Nyishi, Adi, Apatani, and Monpa communities of Arunachal Pradesh, finger millet and foxtail millet are traditionally prepared as porridges, steamed dishes, and fermented beverages served during festivals and village gatherings.
The Adi community also cultivates anyat, better known as Job’s tears or adlay millet, alongside ayak, or foxtail millet, through mixed-cropping systems that have long been part of Indigenous jhum agriculture.
In Meghalaya, the Khasi, Garo, and Jaintiacommunities have grown millet in upland fields for generations, using it in everyday meals as well as traditional brews.
Several Naga tribes, including the Yimkhiung community, continue to prepare finger millet and foxtail millet as porridges and local beverages. In Mizoram, millet was once a staple before rice became widely available and is still used in traditional fermented drinks.
Further west, the Lepcha and Bhutiacommunities of Sikkim have long relied on finger millet for breads, porridges, and fermented foods suited to the colder Himalayan climate.
Even in Assam, where rice dominates today’s cuisine, hill communities such as the Karbi, Mising, and Bodo continue to preserve millet cultivation for ceremonial foods and traditional brewing practices.
The grains may differ from one community to another, but the knowledge surrounding them is equally rich.
When rice replaced tradition
That diversity began to decline from the 1970s onwards.
With the expansion of the Public Distribution System (PDS), rice became cheaper and more widely available. Agricultural policies increasingly favoured paddy cultivation, while urbanisation gradually changed food preferences.
For many younger generations, rice came to symbolise modernity, while traditional grains slowly disappeared from everyday diets.
Beyond daily meals, these grains are deeply tied to the cultural heritage of tribal communities. They are highly utilized as an ingredient in traditional fermented beverages and rice beers, which carry significant ritualistic and social importance. Photograph: (North East Network)
The Frontiers study points to other challenges as well, including the loss of Indigenous seed varieties, weak market linkages, soil acidity, and the gradual erosion of traditional ecological knowledge.
Yet the researchers argue that the region’s millet heritage offers practical solutions to many of today’s agricultural challenges.
Millets require far less water than rice, tolerate changing climatic conditions, improve dietary diversity, and reduce dependence on costly agricultural inputs. For farmers across the fragile mountain ecosystems of the Northeast, they remain among the region’s most resilient crops.
Women bringing the grains home
In Nagaland’s Shamator district, that knowledge found new life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When supply chains broke down in 2020, many families realised how dependent they had become on food transported from outside the district. By then, Indigenous millet cultivation had declined so sharply that several traditional seed varieties had nearly disappeared.
Members of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) began collecting millet seeds from neighbouring villages, laying the foundation for what is now known as the Millet Sisters.
Working with the North East Network and the Millet Network of India, the women revived forgotten millet varieties, launched an annual Millet Festival celebrating Indigenous food traditions, and expanded millet cultivation across the district.
By 2025, nearly 90 farmers were once again growing pearl millet, finger millet, foxtail millet, sorghum, and locally named landraces includingKotsaru, Phuhjem Muliam, Yetupiak, Kheak Khih Shipu, Wuh Ni Muk Athsap, and Tansung.
Listening before reinventing
A similar effort is underway in Arunachal Pradesh.
Entrepreneur Dimum Pertin founded Gepo Aaliafter watching her grandmother search for anyat—the Job’s tears millet that had once been a staple in Adi kitchens but had become increasingly difficult to find.
The name Dimum chose for her startup, Gepo Aali, carries a deep and heartfelt meaning: “Gepo means comfort, and it is something that I resonate with a lot of things personally. And Ali is the yellow seed. It translates to the seed of comfort. Photograph: (The Better India)
Today, women farmers continue to grow the grain through traditional mixed-cropping systems. It is prepared as porridge, served with vegetables and lentils, and fermented into apong, a traditional beer brewed by several Indigenous communities in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam.
The brewing process combines locally grown grains such as finger millet, foxtail millet, or pearl millet with Indigenous starter cakes made from leaves and herbs, creating a beverage that has been part of community life for generations.
Even the husk is put to use as pig feed, reflecting the resource-efficient farming practices that have long characterised Indigenous agriculture.
A future rooted in ancient knowledge
The revival of millets in Northeast India is not about bringing back a forgotten crop.
It is about recognising that some of the most effective solutions to climate change, food security, and sustainable farming have existed in Indigenous communities all along.
As India invests in a millet-powered future, tribal farmers across Nagaland, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Assam, and beyond continue to preserve knowledge that nourishes people, protects biodiversity, and builds resilience in the face of a changing climate.
The country’s millet revolution, it turns out, did not begin in recent years.
It has been quietly unfolding in the hills of Northeast India for centuries.
