One of humanity's oldest crops — millet was feeding Chinese civilizations 10,000 years ago, and still sustains half a billion people today.
A cereal grass cultivated for its small edible seeds, widely grown in Asia and Africa as a staple food crop.
From Middle French millet, diminutive of mil meaning millet, from Latin milium meaning millet Key roots: *melh₂- (Proto-Indo-European: "to grind, crush").
Millet was domesticated around 8000 BCE in northern China — making it one of the earliest cultivated crops. It fed the civilizations that built the Great Wall. Today, millet is the sixth most important cereal crop globally, feeding over 500 million people, primarily in Africa and Asia.