How India's 'millet ambassador' preserves ancient grains - and helps promote food security

Laheri Bai's seed bank ensures traditional grains are kept alive amid a wider effort to promote millet's suitability for cultivation in challenging climate conditionsCollecting seeds in her mud-walled farmhouse home in central India has pushed Laheri Bai to become a farming celebrity. Earlier this year, after Narendra Modi, the prime minister, tweeted he was "proud" of Bai and the 150 varieties she had preserved, it prompted the Indian media to call her the country's "millet ambassador".Bai and her 1.2 hectares (3 acres) in the east of Madhya Pradesh state have become a symbol of a government policy to promote old, traditional grains that will prove sustainable in the face of climate breakdown. Continue reading...