The colonial transformation of Indian agriculture using science and technology have its origins in the British agriculture revolution and allied experiments of the 17th and 18th centuries. With the notion of experiments emerges a set of parameters that are to be measured, and metrics on which the parameters can be reported and compared, and where needed, improve towards certain agreed upon standards or a projected potential. Standards and measurements employed during this process had an explicit commercial angle to it. The unifying nature of standards and measurements is a precondition for something to become a mass commodity (Scott 1998:31). It also implies that for the convenience of uniformity to cater market needs, diversity maybe overlooked. This has implications for the production, processing and consumption of something as diverse as millets. The sheer diversity of small millets makes it difficult to bring within the rubric of standardisation process.
Using the co-production framework we look into the measurement and standards involved in the millets, and small millets ecosystem in particular. Increasing commercial interests on millets is making standardisation a necessity. Measurements and standards is also a factor in scaling of decentralized small scale millet processing. Drawing from expert meetings and personal interviews with actors involved in millet processing ecosystem in India, we check how the biophysical properties of millets and actors' perceptions are making the processes complex. . Results from this study invites attention to the catch-22 case of millets agri-foodsystem that on the one hand seek to bring resilience through diversity, while on the other hand aspiring to bring uniformity to cater the need of market and industry.
