Kezoma village in Nagaland's Kohima district has staged a remarkable agricultural turnaround, reviving millet cultivation from zero hectares to a thriving, double-season farming system through a combination of departmental support, farm mechanisation, and active community participation. The initiative, launched in 2024 by the District Agriculture Office, Kohima, in collaboration with the Kezoma Village Council, is now being cited as a replicable model for sustainable agriculture across Nagaland.

A Decade of Disappearance, Then a Restart

According to a District Agriculture Office official, millet cultivation had completely vanished from Kezoma for over a decade, leaving an entire generation with no familiarity with the crop. Recognising its nutritional value and economic potential, the revival programme began with farmer mobilisation, awareness drives, and seed distribution. From a baseline of zero hectares, cultivation reached one hectare in the first year of the programme.

A critical early intervention was the provision of a millet mill by the District Agriculture Office, which reduced post-harvest labour drudgery by approximately 80 per cent. Officials noted that the ease of mechanised processing directly encouraged more farmers to take up cultivation, strengthening confidence in millet's commercial viability.

Millet Festival Generates ₹13-14 Lakh in a Single Day

In 2025, Kezoma hosted its first-ever Millet Festival, which became a showcase for local produce and value-added millet products. Approximately 4,000 kg of millet grain was displayed and marketed, with reported productivity of 20–25 quintals per hectare across two hectares. The combined sale of millet grain and processed products reportedly generated ₹13–14 lakh in a single day, demonstrating the crop's potential as a meaningful income source for village households.

This comes amid a broader national push under the International Year of Millets 2023 legacy, with several northeastern states exploring millet revival as both a nutritional and livelihood strategy. Kezoma's results offer concrete, ground-level evidence of what that effort can yield.

Mechanisation and Irrigation Support in 2026

Building on the festival's success, the District Agriculture Office supplied an additional millet mill and a millet thresher in 2026 to expand processing capacity. Average yield has reached approximately 2,000–2,500 kg per hectare, with total village production estimated at 12,000–13,000 kg.

A particularly notable development is the introduction of double-season millet cultivation. Initially undertaken on an experimental basis in 2025, the second crop gained traction after a successful harvest. In 2026, approximately two hectares were brought under the second crop, with harvesting expected by November. To address water availability constraints, a sprinkler irrigation system was installed under the Per Drop More Crop (PDMC) scheme, supporting year-round water management and a more productive multi-crop calendar.

Why Kezoma's Model Matters

The village's journey — from complete absence of millet farming to organised double-season production with market linkages — highlights the interdependence of farmer awareness, mechanisation, irrigation, technical guidance, and access to markets. Notably, the intervention required no single large capital outlay; instead, incremental inputs at each stage compounded into a structural shift in the local agricultural economy.

Officials have flagged the initiative as a promising template for replication across other villages in Nagaland and potentially across the northeast, where traditional crops have similarly retreated over the past two to three decades.

With the second crop harvest due by November 2026 and processing infrastructure now in place, Kezoma's millet story appears set to deepen further — a rare case of a traditional crop making a commercially credible comeback.