Underlying objective of food security programme in India is to ensure the availability of foodgrains to the common people at an affordable price. The PDS system in India is based on the wheat and rice model, which in many areas were never the staple grains for household consumption. It was millets and pulses which were core to dryland farming and consumption in the country.

Sweet sorghum is a special type of sorghum which accumulates sugars in its stalks. The unique high carbon assimilation capability of sorghum crop coupled with another desirable trait of accumulating high levels of extractable sugars in the stalk can be exploited for extensive use of sorghum as raw material for manufacturing ethanol, jaggery, syrup and paper.However, with the ever increasing demand for industrial and fuel-grade ethanol, the scope of using sweet sorghum in ethanol industry as a supplementary raw material to sugarcane molasses is catching up.