Hi Chinmay, and thank you for your follow-up inquiry.
While we don't have a comprehensive list of importers of grains like millets, may I suggest two to start with? Both are based in the upper Midwest US. There may be others on the coasts. And I believe there would also be a number of smaller importers of packaged products from India, including millets, who distribute largely to the small or medium food stores in the US that specialize in South Asian products.
The two general importers I mentioned are:
* Terra Ingredients, Minneapolis, Minnesota
https://www.terraingredients.com/ . Terra does a lot of work with fonio and also specializes in organic ingredients. I mentioned Saiway in a note to its director, Peter Carlson (I don't know him personally or professionally).
* Woodland Gourmet (formerly Woodland Foods), Waukegan, Illinois (it's a suburb of Chicago)
https://www.woodlandgourmet.com/ . It seems to be larger than Terra, and considers itself a "leader in the specialty foods industry." It seems to have imported as well as domestically produced items. Their wide range of grains include: fonio, sorghum, Job's tears (adlay), and "millet," which is certainly proso millet. (I don't have any contacts at this company.)
One problem in marketing the wonderful diversity of millets to consumers in this region is that most people know little to nothing about them. It is a problem even for domestically produced proso, sorghum, and teff. Among imported millets, only fonio has achieved a kind of breakthrough as a specialty food.
A large part of what NAMA is dedicated to is increasing awareness of and interest in the range of millets. That's a long process.
However, I'm thinking (as one with no business experience or marketing education) that breakthroughs might be achieved on selected specific millets. Encouraging people to eat millets in general might work in India, where everyone is familiar to one degree or another with several of them, but here millets are on the margins of the food culture, and when most people hear "millet," they think of proso (even if they don't know that name) and likely also birdseed.
Among millets not grown in North America, might finger millet (ragi), with its interesting flavor and very high calcium levels achieve such a breakthrough? In what kinds of products might it work best in the market here?
And so on with other specific millets. What "superpowers" does a particular millet bring to the plate?
If a company like Terra Ingredients or Woodland Gourmet partnered with an Indian exporter like Saiway International to bring one or more millets to the US, they would (as I understand it) be supplying food processing / packaging companies, which in turn would sell to retailers to sell to consumers. There are financial commitments at all levels, with an uncertain market. Who might invess in a project to get this started?
Sorry this doesn't give you more specifics to work with, but if you haven't contacted the two companies mentioned above, maybe they're a place to start?
In the meantime, is anyone familiar with companies like Terra and Woodland elsewhere in the US or in Canada, which deal in specialty grain crops, including imports?
All the best,
Don
DO, EL, MI, US
