Used locally, both as a food and as a livestock feed. In all areas where they are cultivated, millets are used in traditional beer brewing. Also used as a feed for birds. A wide variety of millets are grown as forage crops and as food cereals. Millets were probably first cultivated in Asia or Africa more than 4,000 years ago.
Millets are a major food staple in much of Asia, Eastern Europe, and the western part of Africa.
In the United States and Western Europe they are used chiefly for pasture or to produce hay, though they were frequently raised grains in Europe during the Middle Ages. Pearl millet, or cattail millet, is suited to soils of low fertility and limited moisture and is a popular food crop in India and Africa. The millets are somewhat strong in taste and cannot be made into leavened bread but are mainly consumed in flatbreads and porridges or prepared and eaten much like rice. The edible starchy grain of the oat plant is cultivated widely in the temperate regions of the world. Wild oats were first found growing in Western Europe, apparently as a weed mixed with barley, and spread from there to other parts of the world.