Read the following passage and answer the given questions.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has declared 2023 to be the ‘International Year of Millets’, giving these crops a shot in the arm even as countries worldwide are looking to them for their ability to grow in environmental conditions that the climate crisis is ______________ more common. Millets are becoming more popular in India as well because of their low input requirements and high nutritional density, both of which are valuable for a country whose food security is expected to face significant challenges in the coming decades.
Millets are fundamentally grasses. They are drought-tolerant, adapted to growing in warm weather, and require low moisture (axiomatically, they are particularly efficient consumers of water) and loamy soil. They don’t grow well in water-logged or extremely dry soil, such as might occur after heavy rainfall or particularly bad droughts, respectively. Nonetheless, millets have the reliability upper hand over crops like rice and maize with more drought-like conditions expected in many parts of the world. This said, millets don’t abhor better growing conditions, and respond positively to higher moisture and nutrient content in the soil. According to a research, millets also “thrive on marginal land in upland and hilly regions”; marginal land is land whose rent is higher than the value of crops that can be cultivated there.
The nutritional content of millets includes carbohydrates, proteins, fibre, amino acids, and various minerals. Different millet varieties have different nutrient profiles. According to various studies, foxtail millet is rich in the amino acid lysine; finger millet has more crude fibre than wheat and rice; proso millet has a significant amount of the amino acids leucine, isoleucine, and methionine; and overall, millets have been found to be important sources of micronutrients and phytochemicals.
Processing and preparing millets for consumption can affect nutrients in three ways: enhance them, suppress/remove them, and ignore them. The husk is removed from the grains because it is composed of cellulosic matter that the human body can’t consume and digest. On the other hand, it is found that millet husk can be briquetted and used as household fuel, and potentially alleviate energy poverty in some power deficient countries.