TAMIL TRADITIONS:

WOMEN COOKING AND EATING FOR HERITAGE AND HEALTH IN SOUTH INDIA

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IE Madeline Chera
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Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Anthropology,
Indiana University
May 2020
 ProQuest Number: 27957945

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 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Doctoral Committee

_____________________________________

Richard Wilk, PhD

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_____________________________________

IE Andrea Wiley, PhD

_____________________________________
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Eduardo Brondizio, PhD

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_____________________________________

Susan Seizer, PhD

23 March 2020

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 Copyright © 2020

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Madeline Chera
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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Countless people have contributed to this work in some way, big or small, and even more

people have helped me grow as a researcher and a person during and through my graduate

studies. Here I name a few, but my gratitude extends to all.

Research Facilitation & Field Support

First and foremost, I give a hearty vote of thanks to all my interlocutors in Tamil Nadu who

shared their perspectives with me and let me spend time with them.

Special gratitude goes to those people who actively facilitated the research, including

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Professor Vasantha Esther Rani of Fatima College, Madurai, who extended warm welcome and

mentorship, and for the College administrators who allowed me to be hosted there. Many
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thanks to R. Sameera Shirin, A. Shivpoornima Anbuselvan, J. Manjula, S. Charlaitta Mary, and
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for their assistance in undertaking the research and for their friendship. The rest of the Home

Sciences with Food Biotechnology Department was welcoming and gave me insights into fields

related to nutrition and hospitality in South India.

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Thanks also to the DHAN Foundation, whose foundation staff and kaḷañciyam staff and

members facilitated my work extensively. In particular, Mr. Vasimalai, Executive Director, Mr.

A. Madhan Kumar, Ms. S. Ahila Devi, Mr. Bharathi, Ms. Pandimeena, Ms. Jhansi, Mr.

Palanisamy, Mr. Karthikeyan, Ms. Revathi, Ms. Periyammal and all of her field staff, Mr. T.

Dhanabalan, and Ms. Anitha, contributed their time and guidance and facilitated the research.

The drivers of the millet vending vehicle, Mr. Arunachellam and Mr. Ashokakumar, facilitated

collection of the data. Mr. Anwar Khan and Ms. Hamila provided translation assistance.

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 Ms. Rojamani and her team at Paarambariyam and other locally based businesses were

generous enough to spend their time with me and open enough to allow me to visit their

operations. Mr. Thanaraj Radhai and Ms. Parvathy Subramanian and team members in activist,

advocacy, and social services groups welcomed me to learn about their work on grassroots

development and education.

Lady Doak College gave me another home in Madurai, and Ms. Nisha Felicita and Ms.

Rasha Shanaz contributed greatly to my insights and conduct of research. The Chella Meenakshi

(CM) Centre Madurai and its staff, led by Dr. V. A. Vidya, helped me expand my Tamil language

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skills and facilitated research in the city.

Previous to this project, Dr. Arun Raja Selvan, my first Tamil language teacher at the
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South Asia Summer Language Institute (SASLI) at University of Wisconsin, helped draw me to
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Madurai, and the faculty and staff at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS) in Madurai,

including Dr. Bharathy LakshmanaPerumal and Mrs. Sondhrakohila, encouraged me to explore

it further. My friends and teachers in the Living Routes program at Auroville, where I studied
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abroad as an undergraduate, and especially Martina Ljungquist and the women of

Naturellement, sparked my interest in local Tamil foodways and women’s lived experiences. My

friends throughout my studies in Tamil Nadu encouraged me to persist despite the challenges

of a new language and context and have inspired me with their own projects.

Several funders provided financial support for this project: Indiana University’s Office of

Sustainability through a Sustainability Research Development grant (2014), Indiana University’s

Office for the Vice President of Research through a Mellon Innovating International Research

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Teaching and Collaboration (MIIRT) award (2014), and the United States-India Educational

Foundation through a Fulbright-Nehru junior research fellowship (2015-2016, #2015/ST/24).

The Fulbright-Nehru program facilitated my second research trip, and Ms. Maya Sundararajan

worked to support my progress. The US Department of Education’s Foreign Language & Area

Studies Fellowship (FLAS) awards supported my language study at SASLI and AIIS, and the

Department of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington supported my preliminary field

exploration trip through a David C. Skomp Feasibility Study Fellowship.

I conducted the research with approval from the Indiana University Institutional Review

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Board (IRB), under protocol #1407714628 with expedited review, and with a research visa from

the Government of India. IE

Colleagues and Mentors in the Academy
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Thanks to the many colleagues who have inspired, reviewed, and commented on my work, and

provided suggestions, sparked ideas, and supported me as a peer or mentee through the ups

and downs of research.

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My masters and doctoral adviser, Dr. Richard Wilk, introduced me to the world of the

Anthropology of Food, and trained me as a field researcher, a college instructor, and a program

administrator. He also tried to make me a clearer writer, with mixed results. Due to his efforts,

and with help from many others, Indiana University Bloomington is a global leader in the

interdisciplinary study of food, and I was able to learn from experts and influential figures in

this field.

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 Dr. Andrea Wiley and Dr. Eduardo Brondizio have contributed to the renown of this

program and to my four-field understanding of food, emphasizing the connections between

culture, biology, ecology, and policy. Dr. Wiley and Dr. Susan Seizer provided me with a

grounding in the study of South Asia, helping orient my research on foodways and of Madurai-

specific cultural traditions, respectively. Together, Drs. Wilk, Wiley, Brondizio, and Seizer have

encouraged and pushed me throughout my long research process and helped me build a wide

range of skills along the way. Any shortcomings of this project are despite their hard work, sage

advice, and careful feedback, and any wisdom is derived in part from what they taught me.

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The editors at Food, Culture & Society, and of the two special issues in which some of

the research discussed here was also published, as well as the anonymous but generous
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reviewers, helped me refine my ideas and get my work out into the world. Drs. Greg de St.
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Maurice, Theresa Miller, and Marvin Montefrio, along with Dr. Wilk, have given me the

opportunity to develop connections between my work and that of other leaders in the field of

Anthropology of Food and Nutrition.

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Other colleagues and mentors in the field of food anthropology, including Dr. Ryan

Adams, Shun-Nan Chiang, Dr. Stacey Giroux, Bradley Jones, Dr. Hayden Kantor, and Dr. David

Sutton, have made me feel welcome and among “my people,” providing me with valuable

feedback, support, and dinner company. Chief among these colleagues are my classmates and

friends from Indiana University Bloomington, including Adrianne Bryant, Dr. Leigh Bush, Aaron

Ellis, Kane Ferguson, Lucy Miller Hurst-Dodd, Dr. Ellen Ireland, Dr. Chi-Hoon Kim, and Claire

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Quimby. They have provided camaraderie, interlocution, and the support of true friendship that

buoys the spirit and re-ignites curiosity.

Families

I ended up with many honorary uncles and aunties, sisters, neighbors, and friends in Tamil

Nadu, and I am very grateful for all of them. Above all, however, stand two families who made

me feel at home almost instantly and treated me as their own. Without the Renganathan family

and the Ramesh families, I would have struggled too greatly with loneliness and cluelessness to

complete the data collection work required for this project. I would have also missed many

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great meals and keen insights. Their generosity, hospitality, and care are gifts I treasure, and I

will continue to emulate them by passing these gifts along to others. Such human connections
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were worth the journey, even if I never wrote a dissertation.
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Finally, I am incredibly thankful for my family here in my own country. My parents

fostered my curiosity from the earliest age, and encouraged me to pursue knowledge and

explore, even when they were unfamiliar with the path. Along with my parents-in-law, they
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have retained optimistic excitement about my pursuits and abilities, even when my own

confidence has flagged. My brother and sister-in-law and their partners have provided laughter

and support. And finally, all blame and credit for my PhD must ultimately be given to my

partner in all things and my handy ethnographer’s spouse in field research, Dr. Ryan

Feigenbaum. He told me graduate school would be a good idea! I certainly would not have

been able to complete it or this project without him.

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 Madeline Chera

TAMIL TRADITIONS:

WOMEN COOKING AND EATING FOR HERITAGE AND HEALTH IN SOUTH INDIA

Increases in diet-related diseases, imminent climate crises, and rapid changes in lifestyle

have provoked widespread attempts in South India to return to and preserve traditional

foodways. In the city of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, people recognize food as a conduit of cultural

heritage and perceive their consumption practices as opportunities to secure and demonstrate

their ethnic identity. While we see examples of food culture revitalization in other parts of the

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world, the practices in Madurai of cooking and eating foods marked as traditional, or thinking

about doing so, ensure physical, metaphysical, and social well-being in ways that are culturally
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specific to the local Tamil context. In some cases, these eating strategies are explicit, as with the
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promotion of so-called “neglected and underutilized species” like minor millet grains, through

large-scale public campaigns. In other ways, complex but taken-for-granted understandings of

ideal family dynamics, the scope of valid knowledge, ethno-ecology, and personhood guide the
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high value placed on traditional food consumption.

The path to re-embracing traditional foods is a winding and uneven one, with many

obstacles and complications standing between everyday eaters, their assertion of Tamil

heritage, and their striving toward well-being through Tamil food culture. In this ethnographic

dissertation, I illustrate the challenges that non-profits and entrepreneurs are facing in

transforming views of historically stigmatized foods, despite a range of purported benefits. I use

extensive interview, cultural domain analysis, and participant observation data to show how

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young women navigate liminal categories and often confusing messaging about traditional and

novel foods. They utilize aspects of culturally specific Tamil worldviews and the lessons of their

elders to mitigate risk to their health and to critique aspects of the neoliberal, global food

system that spawns that risk. Simultaneously, they try to balance deeply ingrained Tamil values

about gender, domesticity, purity, beauty, and flexibility, with changing opportunities and new

expectations. Their comments indicate shared commitment to food revitalization as a means to

preserve Tamil culture and personal and collective well-being, but they also underscore the

uneven responsibility born by individual women to maintain heritage and health in the face of

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culture change.

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Richard Wilk, PhD

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_____________________________________
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Andrea Wiley, PhD

_____________________________________

Eduardo Brondizio, PhD

_____________________________________

Susan Seizer, PhD

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 PREFACE

I followed the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) (2001) norms for

transliterating Indic scripts into the Latin characters (ISO 15919). In the body of the text, I have

included those transliterations, italicized, with my own English translations or context

explanations. There is an extensive glossary of Tamil terms used in the text in Appendix A.

Some Tamil words have one or more commonly used or popular English transliterations

that does not conform to the ISO standards. I included many of these common versions in the

glossary, but I opted for the ISO standards in the text, for uniformity.

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Translations of speech from my original research are my own. Many of the people with

whom I spoke or whom I observed spoke in a mix of Tamil and English, and some spoke with me
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exclusively in English. In the latter cases, I have simply transcribed verbatim.
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All images included are my own or are used with Creative Commons licensing or under

fair use. All excerpted material also falls under fair use with attribution.
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE ....................................................................................................................................... xi
CHAPTER 1: Eating for Heritage and Health .................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 2: Madurai in Context .................................................................................................. 21
CHAPTER 3: Tamil Food Culture .................................................................................................. 42
CHAPTER 4: Tamil Food Values and Heritage as Cultural Critique ............................................... 77
CHAPTER 5: Transforming Millets and Changing Tastes ............................................................ 103
CHAPTER 6: Millet Eaters and Barriers to Consumption ........................................................... 130
CHAPTER 7: College Women and Cultural Domains .................................................................. 160
CHAPTER 8: Country Chicken and Multiple Knowledges ........................................................... 201

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CHAPTER 9: Hand-Made Taste and Home Cooking ................................................................... 223
CHAPTER 10: Traditional Food for All? ...................................................................................... 257
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REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................. 263
APPENDIX A: Tamil Terms Used in the Text .............................................................................. 275
APPENDIX B: Summary Data from Internship with NGO ........................................................... 298
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APPENDIX C: Summary Background on Cultural Domain Analysis ............................................ 307

APPENDIX D: Snacks Identified from Free Lists for Pile Sort...................................................... 315
APPENDIX E: Demographic Data of Pile Sort Participants ......................................................... 319
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APPENDIX F: Cultural Consensus for Snacks Included in Pile Sort ............................................. 322
APPENDIX G: Demographic Data of Focus Group Participants .................................................. 323
CURRICULUM VITAE

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 CHAPTER 1: Eating for Heritage and Health

Urban, working- and middle-class women with whom I spoke in two focus groups made the
following comments (see Chapter 7):

“In between the old days and the modern ones, there was a change to adults’ diet to
match kids’ desires. But now, in an effort to return the kids to health, adults are happy
to return to it, too.”

“Whatever was traditional is being brought back as diet food.”

Lakshmi: “Even in those days, women were working.”

Revathi: “In those days, women worked in the morning and cooked hot in the evening
when it was cool outside.”
Apsara: “Now we’re cooking three times per day.”

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A woman entrepreneur of a value-added healthy and traditional food business explained the
state of popular interest in the types of products she sells.
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Now we are in a much better place than four or five years ago. The change was because
of the organic revolution, which started from the North and is coming down South.
Everyone is talking about it. Moreover, people are traveling a lot now, and they are
more aware. And the working class wants to feel better; they want to be healthy. We
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have diabetes, anemia, and nutritional deficiency; the percentage is higher [now].

Introduction

Like sweet, milky poṅkal boiling over the side of the pot on a gas burner, sometimes a change in
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the state of things seems to happen suddenly. The decadent rice poṅkal, made to celebrate the

harvest season in South India (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2), starts gurgling slowly, and then the instant you

turn away, the sugary foam bubbles up and spurts of magma-like boiling rice start to pour over

the sides. This change in form is a happy occurrence, signaling abundance and kicking off days

of festivities. But it can also create a mess if you are not carefully tending the pot and the flame.

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Figure 1.1. Sweet poṅkal cooking on an outdoor stove at a public celebration near Madurai and a
decorative rangoli design, on the pavement outside a home, illustrating the bubbling over of the rice
dish.
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Figure 1.2. Topographical map of India and Sri Lanka, with bordering parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Nepal, Tibet, Bangladesh, and Myanmar (Burma); by user Uwe Dedering, with Creative Commons
licensing, via Wikimedia Commons.

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 People in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu (Fig. 1.3), where poṅkal is eaten in

celebration of the festival season also called Poṅkal, have experienced a drastic change over the

past several decades in their foodways, the culturally informed practices, beliefs, and values

surrounding food. Many people have embraced these changes, which include greater access to

certain foods and more choice among new kinds of foods. There have been technological

changes, like those brought by the Green Revolution, and political changes, like those

established through entitlement programs. Economic changes, through trade liberalization, and

cultural changes, expedited through advertising and new media, have transformed the food

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system and food culture over the past few decades, too. All these changes have brought a

sense of generalized plenty and greater opportunity for consumption. Like the bubbling poṅkal,
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these changes are cause for celebration, by many estimations. However, the relative rapidity
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with which foodways are shifting has also provoked a sense of surprise and panic: What can be

done about the messiness left in its wake?

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Figure 1.3. Topographical and political map of the southeastern part of the Indian subcontinent’s
peninsula.
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Contemporary Crisis and Culture Change
For many people living in Tamil Nadu, recent changes to food culture have brought negative

consequences along with the benefits of novelty and choice. Popular discourse has reflected a

sense of contemporary crisis surrounding Tamil foodways as a result. The ill effects of these

culture change are numerous and include poor health, environmental disaster, and economic

and social disintegration. Poor health is an especially salient problem, and people are widely

concerned about increased incidence of diet-related diseases like Type II diabetes and heart

disease (Anjana et al. 2017). Nutrition research shows that the “triple burden” of overnutrition,

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undernutrition, and micronutrient deficiencies has persisted or increased in Tamil Nadu and

other parts of India in the past decade (Constantinides et al. 2019, Meenakshi 2016).
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Researchers and non-experts alike see stunting, anemia, extremes in weight, and diet-related

diseases as results of food culture change and as the health-related aspect of the contemporary
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crisis facing Tamil society.

Susceptibility to less predictable rainfall and harsh weather patterns related to climate
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change have contributed to the crisis (Dhanya and Ramachandran 2016, Saravanakumar 2015,

Varadan and Kumar 2015). As agricultural production has become more consolidated and

focused on monocultures of cash crops, pests and disease have continued to loom as food

system problems that impact everyday life (Sharma et al. 2015). While foreign-owned and

domestic multi-national corporations (MNCs), new cuisines, and new formats for buying,

preparing, and eating food have become established throughout Tamil Nadu, many Tamils have

also been concerned about widening wealth gaps and dwindling economic opportunity and

food access for the poor (Anand and Thampi 2016, Gopichandran et al. 2010, Narayanan 2015).

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Simultaneously, they have lamented the loss of traditions and cultural identity that were once

passed down and expressed through foodways (Ramakrishnan 2014).

Tamils perceive these negative consequences of change in food culture and food

systems converging together to the point of crisis, and people in the city of Madurai, which

sprawls across the plain of the Vaigai river in the south-central part of Tamil Nadu (Fig. 1.4),

have felt this crisis acutely. Madurai is bustling and expanding today, but it is an ancient city,

known across India for its connection to Tamil traditions in the arts, scholarship, and religious

practice (see Chapter 2). It is the third-largest city in the state, with over a million residents in

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the city limits, and many more moving in and out from the surrounding suburban and rural,

agricultural areas. Madurai’s significance to Tamil history and cultural identity and its
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reputations as both the “city that never sleeps” and an “overgrown village” with a familiar,
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perhaps old-fashioned feel make it a particularly important place to study public responses to

the recent changes in Tamil food culture. This dissertation follows that line of investigation,

with attention to how people of various backgrounds perceive and adapt to the benefits and
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drawbacks of food culture change. I focus on Tamil women, since cooking for the household is a

gendered role. I examine the ways that Tamil women in Madurai have embraced the boons of

new opportunities for consumption while mitigating the contemporary crisis posed by changing

foodways. They have pursued traditional foodways as a solution.

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Figure 1.4. Political map of Tamil Nadu with Madurai district in red and Madurai city pinpointed in
green. Based on image by user Coppercholride, with Creative Commons licensing, via Wikimedia
Commons.

Focus of This Dissertation

Purpose
During my research, I observed that people in and around Madurai recognized food as a

conduit of cultural heritage, and they perceived their consumption practices as opportunities to

secure and demonstrate their ethnic identity, while also restoring bodily, social, and

environmental well-being. Through food revitalization, re-embrace of foods and foodways

associated with Tamil heritage and tradition, people in Madurai believed they could address the

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contemporary crisis and reverse some of the damage that food-related changes have wrought.

The idea that revitalization of food practices and eating habits connected to the past can hold

the keys to a better future is neither unique to Madurai nor a new concept, but during my

research, I saw Madurai Tamils pursuing food revitalization in three primary ways to address

the contemporary crisis they experienced. These strategies were shaped by culturally specific

food values and the structures of local food systems and food culture. I argue it is essential to

understand the objectives that Madurai Tamils have been trying to achieve through food

revitalization efforts and the strategies that they have been using to do so before assessing the

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outcomes of those efforts and strategies. To identify these goals and strategies and understand

the challenges and outcomes of food revitalization efforts is the impetus for this dissertation.
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Proponents of food revitalization work in Madurai during my research were working
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toward the goals of navigating the cultural changes I mentioned and ameliorating the ill effects

of the multi-faceted contemporary crisis that they saw as the result of these changes. They

wanted to recover and maintain their Tamil cultural heritage and their health, including
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physical, metaphysical, social, environmental, and economic well-being. I saw Tamils employing

three primary strategies to reach their goals: through agricultural biodiversity conservation,

through prevention of knowledge loss, and through promotion of home cooking. These

strategies were connected by Tamil food values that emphasize place, identity, holistic health,

home, and women’s care. People’s framings of food revitalization in Madurai drew on these

shared values, and they were often not overtly political. However, proponents of food

revitalization were critical of the global food system, economic and social conditions, foreign

influence, and gendered expectations, even if their resistance was oblique, implicit, or uneven.

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Moreover, women, who were the focus of many aspects of food revitalization work, identified

many practical challenges they faced in embracing traditional foods as much as they might have

liked to do.

Data and Analysis

I base these conclusions on data I collected on two seven-month field research trips to

Madurai, from October 2014 to May 2015 and from February to September 2016. These trips

followed a four-month stay in Tamil Nadu for Tamil language study and exploration and

planning in June through September of 2013. The two longer research trips allowed me to

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pursue two phases of research, with the first phase focused on development projects and

formal, institutional revitalization efforts to increase consumption of traditional foods. The

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second phase centered on women’s food knowledge and practices in schools and homes,

looking at how they interpreted and used food revitalization in their daily life through cooking
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and eating. These two phases provided a comprehensive picture of how Madurai Tamils

pursued the three strategies for food revitalization (agricultural biodiversity conservation,
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prevention of knowledge loss, and promotion of home cooking).

I ground this research in the rich history and literatures of Anthropology of Food and

Nutrition, Environmental Anthropology, and South Asia Studies, with attention to globalization,

scientific and development discourses, gender, and power. I used ethnographic methods,

including semi-structured and unstructured interview, pile sort and cultural domain analysis,

and extensive participant observation with Tamil people living in Madurai city or Madurai

district to collect the data that I present here as evidence for my analysis. In researching food

revitalization focused on agricultural biodiversity conservation, I worked with a development

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organization and interviewed 60 women who were involved in their programs, including in rural

and urban settings. I interviewed 60 students at a women’s college in Madurai to understand

the perspectives of young people and food revitalization strategies focused on nostalgic

knowledge loss prevention. Finally, I spoke with 20 young adult and middle-aged women of

varying backgrounds in two focus groups about cooking and visited several of their homes for

cooking observations and follow-up interviews. Throughout the research, I was living with,

observing, and speaking with women and men of various backgrounds, including in more

formal interviews with business owners and politicians and everyday activities with friends and

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strangers. All these experiences informed my interpretations about food revitalization in

Madurai. IE
I base my research in the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition and Environmental
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Anthropology, in subject matter, approach, and primary literatures. This is a project about the

ways that a project focused on addressing nutrition-, environment-, and identity-related

problems operates within a food culture and food system. However, I also draw on various
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theoretical concepts and lenses to illustrate and analyze the complexities of using Tamil

traditions to address contemporary crises, including terms and methods from Food Studies,

Foucauldian historical analysis, cognitive anthropology, applied anthropology, and feminist

anthropology. I use each orientation to address different questions, and, through this approach,

I aim to analyze the multi-faceted food revitalization work in Madurai holistically. In my work

with development organizations and businesses, I blend Food Studies’ interest in taste, food

rules, and consumer behavior with an institutional collaboration directed toward improving

programming. While working with college students, I utilized methods from cognitive

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anthropology to assess the shared knowledge among young people and to map the

relationships they saw between healthfulness and tradition in popular foods. I also found

Foucauldian concepts related to power, discipline, and knowledges to be useful in

understanding the contrasts that young women drew between healthy, traditional foods and

unhealthy, non-traditional foods. My work speaking with women about their home cooking

uses methods and concepts from the study of food practice and incorporates ideas from social

science research on gender to center the experiences of women in their gendered roles. In my

focus on gendered roles, spaces, and labor; my collaboration with Tamil women at all stages of

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the research; and my emphasis on women’s diverse voices and lived experiences, this

ethnography is inspired by feminist anthropology and methodologies (Davis and Craven 2016).
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Applications
The insights of my research could be helpful not only in assessment of Madurai’s food
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revitalization and particular programs within it, but also in addressing areas for strengthening

food revitalization efforts, if that is what people in Madurai want to do. This dissertation
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provides researchers in the global context with information for comparison, potentially helping

us understand how local pursuits to promote traditional foods and foodways are connected to

and informed by global efforts and discourses, including those surrounding biodiversity

conservation, local eating, public nutrition, and home cooking. Advocates working in such

transnational projects can use information about understand how ideal family dynamics, the

scope of valid knowledge, ethno-ecology, and personhood guide the high value placed on

traditional food consumption.

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 Strategies for Food Revitalization

I identified three primary strategies through which Tamil people were pursuing food

revitalization work in Madurai to address societal problems related to food culture change:

through agricultural biodiversity conservation, through prevention of knowledge loss, and

through promotion of home cooking. In this section, I introduce each strategy by presenting it

in global and cross-cultural context and summarizing the ways Tamils are utilizing the strategy

in local context of Madurai. Then I briefly explain the questions to which I aim to respond

through this research.

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Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation
Tamil food revitalization in Madurai is rooted in part in the framework of agricultural
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biodiversity conservation, which is a project led by international non-profit organizations like

Bioversity International and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations
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(UN) to maintain genetic diversity in food resources, both in situ (on farms, in the wild) and ex

situ (in labs and seed banks). Development institutions and researchers have been focusing
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particularly on food items categorized as “neglected or underutilized species” or “NUS” as

targets for this project. NUS are species that have previously been locally available in a certain

area but that are now marginalized by the dominant agricultural and consumption systems.

Development groups like Bioversity International recognize millets as NUS, arguing that they

will contribute to increased food security and greater community resilience in the face of

malnutrition and climate change, if only they become less neglected and more utilized

(Bergamini et al. 2014; Mayes et al. 2012; Padulosi and Frison 1999; Padulosi, Thompson, and

Rudebjar 2013). Efforts to promote NUS complement other food system re-localization and

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