Pearl Millet: The Drought Resistant Grain
We’re back to looking at ancient grains again today. But this one is a special grain. Sure sure, we’ve covered teff and sorghum on this channel before, and they were mighty impressive. But this channel’s researcher has a special place in her heart for Pearl Millet, because it was the staple food that she grew up with herself. Almost every morning was started with a bowl of Mahangu porridge and liberal amounts of brown sugar, like so many children in the South of Africa have had for thousands of years.
History of Pearl Millet
Archaeobotanical research shows that early strains of Pearl Millet were already well established in prehistoric times. And the first signs of domestication were in Mali and the general West African area. Its wild ancestors are still found in those areas to this day, not having changed much since the last pterodactyls flew in the sky and the first mammals began walking around.
Those first domesticated strands, about 2 to 3 thousand years ago were grown alongside other grains and plant varieties. It made up a valuable part of people’s diets, but it wasn’t really a main staple. It did however make its way to East Africa, Egypt and across the continent to India. India took a liking to the grain, and they’re still the largest producers and exporters of it to this day. But it finally found its forever home with the Bantu tribes that made their way down South in Africa. Places like Namibia, Botswana and a large chunk of South Africa had terribly dry and sometimes inhospitable conditions to contend with, but this passenger didn't seem to mind all that much where it was put down, it just thrived. Where corn and cereal varieties failed miserably because of the drought, Pearl Millet managed to keep these new arrivals fed better than the less drought resistant crops did anyway. It is still the staple food of many people in Botswana, to a lesser degree in Zimbabwe and Zambia, but none more so than in Namibia. A country that’s made up of no less than 70 percent desert.
The Namibians call it Mahangu and from it they make porridge, flat bread, fermented drinks, they feed their animals and they make an excellent beer with it.Their way of growing and pounding the grain with pounding logs hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. It’s a good thing that the kids get so much energy from those pancakes, because they are usually the ones in charge of pounding the grain into flour. Though modern granaries in the country produce popped, rice and breakfast cereals from it now. But even here very little is done to change the grain or add much to it. Just like the native people still grow and consume it with little to no interference from pesticides and lots of chemicals during the manufacturing process, so do the manufacturers also keep their millet products relatively unsullied.
Growing conditions for Pearl Millet
It’s an interesting looking grain with its tightly packed seed heads forming a top that looks a little like riverside cattails from afar. Though the brown pearl millet is what’s mostly grown on homesteads and farms, there are varieties that range from cream white, all the way to a deep purple. The wild variants are a little smaller, standing only a few inches off the ground, where the commercially grown kinds reach a metre or two high.
But even the domesticated millet is still related to its wild ancestors by 85 to 90 percent of their DNA. From a commercial crop perspective, it’s barely moved away from its roots at all in the thousands of years under human care. This is virtually unheard of in agriculture.
Give it any kind of soil and it’ll grow just fine. Sandy, rocky or high acidic soils, honestly it couldn’t care less where you put it. If it's hot and dry, they’ll be as happy as can be. Under ideal conditions a field can be harvested in a little as 45 days.
Most homesteads allow their cattle to trample and fertilise a field before laying down seeds and that’s all the fertiliser that it needs for its entire growth cycle. Most other crops might not like the high acidity that comes with fresh manure that is still in the process of composting, but Pearl Millet prefers it that way. Fresh chicken droppings are added to the fields too, and fowl manure has a habit of decomposing so hot that it can burn sproutlings, but not for the mighty Mahangu.
A little water during their beginning stages should be more than enough, after they’ve reached the halfway mark of their growth cycle, they’ll only need the morning dew or what little water nature provides for them. It’s not that they NEED the environment dry, Pearl Millet just doesn’t need you to over think it’s watering or fertiliser schedule.
Besides being fine with high acidity, it’s also one of the few staple crops that grow in high salinity soils and can be watered with brackish water. This is a very valuable trait in Namibia where deep wells that produce water that’s not fit for drinking is sometimes all there is to work with.
Since it grows so fast, it can give you two major harvests in a single season. Or used as a cover crop in between plantings if you have a two month layover between plantings and you don’t want to leave a field standing empty.
It just doesn’t do well in the cold. But dont think because you live in the Northern Hemisphere that it means that you can’t grow it at all. Even Russia, as cold as it is, grows pearl millet in its short summer seasons. Summers in Russia are still colder than winters are in Namibia, so it’s not like you’ll be limited by your climate all that much. Yes, once the frost comes your planting days are over for the year, but any other time outside of the frost and snow and your millet can go into the ground with minimal field preparation from you. Unlike wheat and corn that can be overcome with smut and mould from the cold spring rains, Pearl millet, though not completely immune, is much less susceptible than the other field crops.
The biggest consideration to take is that their roots go very deep in the ground. Being that they are a drought hardy crop, it should be expected that their roots go deeper to seek water.
Nutritional Information of Pearl Millet
On paper Pearl millet’s digestible energy is comparable to corn, but they blow corn out of the water with their protein percentages. Standing at 12 to 15% they are much more appropriate for the high demanding beef and pig feed that just needs more carbs and protein than most other grain sorts can provide on their own. All the B vitamins, calcium, magnesium, fibre, iron and zinc are all in high quantities. The only thing that Pearl Millet lacks is Lysine, and as you know Lysine is invaluable in animal feed. So even though any livestock can be fed on Pearl Millet alone, covering all of their nutritional needs, it just falls short as a main food sort because of its lack of lysine.
Predictably, those who are more health conscious have been the main driver for pearl millet to reach our grocery store isles. Like quinoa and amaranth, those seeking a gluten free grain that actually holds protein and the necessary B vitamins for optimal nutritional value, found what they’re looking for in Pearl Millet.
This stuff is heavy. There’s a reason kids have a bowl of porridge or a pancake for breakfast and manage to go through the whole day with almost nothing else. Most people who never had it find it too rich and too heavy to have much of it at all before they feel like their stomachs are going to burst.
The beer and fermented drinks made from it are incredibly filling too and on their own are also had instead of a full breakfast. It has all the nutrients that a protein shake would, but it’s even more filling. Perfect to have after a heavy workout.
In places where it’s traditionally grown nursing mothers, babies and toddlers never go a day without eating Pearl Millet in some form of another. Given its high amounts of energy, growing children and milk producing mothers in Southern Africa are very much reliant on it to meet their demanding nutritional needs.
And it’s been said to lower cholesterol and be the best high energy source for those with diabetes. There aren't all that many studies out there to give credence to these claims, but the communities who sustain themselves with Pearl Millet swear by it’s heart strengthening powers.
Benefits of Pearl Millet
But even if you aren’t interested in Pearl Millet to give you that extra gym boost, or to add it to your daily diet, it is still an enormous advantage to have as animal fodder. There are no limits to what species of livestock it can feed, it grows for a fraction of the stress and cost that other grains and cereals do and it’s the most no nonsense and quick harvesting grain that you can find.
Under ideal conditions it produces 70 percent more grain than other Millet varieties. Like the other millets, Pearl is planted closer together than wheat and sorghum, and with those huge seed heads, you’ll get higher yields than you’ll know what to do with. And even though only the grain is used most of the time, the leaf, stem and roots are all edible. This is a huge advantage for those who practise rotational grazing. Pigs especially will till that field up to get at the roots underground, meaning that you can leave the tilling over to them instead of bringing in the tractor.
It has very little insect pressure. Only stink bugs and nematodes really make an appearance, and even then it’s negligible. The birds are another story though, they love Millet, no matter what variety you have. Deer, other wild bucks and rodents can do a bit of damage too. But is that really all that surprising? Get a few cats to keep the flighted and rodent pests in line and make sure your fences are up to standard and your losses will be almost nonexistent.
Cons of Pearl Millet
Pearl Millet doesn’t like it when it rains during its flowering stage and it wants high heat during the day time. It can get diseases brought on by cold, but when it does reach the stage in the season when frost sets in, it won’t even bother trying to keep itself alive through the smut. It’ll die overnight and call it a day for that season. It won’t waste its time, and it won’t waste your time trying to keep it alive when it’s not supposed to be growing.
It does fine in tropic climates and fares well next to major bodies of water where there is more groundwater. It just can't tolerate waterlogged, clay soils. That’s pushing it a little too far. Yes, you can push it farther than almost any other field crop as far as climate goes, but at the end of the day it’ll perform best when it’s left to the dry heat that makes the other crops droop and falter.
It’s the ideal crop to experiment with because it’s just so much more forgiving. It’s not often that you hear of any plant sort that can go from the Namib Desert, to the Russian fields, then to tropical India and even the hugely varied climate of China. Seriously, just because it’s technically a drought crop, doesn’t mean there’s no room to play with it. Actually there’s no other grain that will allow you to have as much room for experimentation that Pearl Millet will.
Everyone who wants a multi purpose crop that can feed people as well as livestock, and for it to do so with virtually no care from you, well you should have given Pearl Millet a try a long time ago.
See you next week! Cheers!