National Food Security Mission

 

What is Food Security?

  • Food security refers to the availability of food and one’s access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation
  • The need for Food Security are:
    • Population growth – this varies considerably across countries. Because of increasing urbanisation, the pressure on food resources also increase
    • Changing tastes – not only is the population growing, but its diet is changing too. As people become more affluent they start eating food that is richer in processed foods, meat and dairy. But to produce more meat means growing more grain
    • Climate change – currently, 40% of the world’s landmass is arid, and rising temperatures will turn yet more of it into desert. At current rates, the amount of food we’re growing today will feed only half of the population by 2050

Basic understanding of Food Security

The Mission

  • In view of the stagnating food grain production and an increasing consumption need of the growing population, Government of India launched this Centrally Sponsored Scheme, ‘National Food Security Mission’ in 2007
    • The scheme was launched based on the recommendation of the agriculture sub-committee of National Development Council(NDC)
  • National Food Security Mission (NFSM) was launched in 2007-08 to increase the production of rice, wheat and pulses through
    • area expansion and productivity enhancement
    • restoring soil fertility and productivity
    • Creating employment opportunities and
    • enhancing farm level economy
  • Targets under the Mission
    • The Mission continued during 12th Five Year Plan with new targets of additional production of food grains of 25 million tonnes of food grains, comprising of 10 million tonnes rice, 8 million tonnes of wheat, 4 million tonnes of pulses and 3 million tonnes of coarse cereals by the end of 12th Five Year Plan.
    • Based on past experience and performance of 12th Plan, the programme continued up to 2019-20, which is co-terminus with Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) period
      • The targets to achieve are 13 million tonnes of additional food grains production comprising of Rice –5 million tonnes, Wheat- 3 million tonnes, Pulses- 3 million tonnes and Coarse Cereals- 2 million tonnes
  • Funding pattern for the mission
    • From the year 2015-16, the mission is being implemented on 60:40 sharing pattern between Centre and State Governments and on 90:10 sharing pattern between Centre and North-eastern & 3 Hill states

  • Components under the Mission
    • NFSM presently comprises of the sub-components viz.,
      • NFSM-Rice
      • NFSM-Wheat
      • NFSM-Pulses
      • NFSM-Coarse Cereals
      • NFSM-Nutri-Cereals and
      • NFSM-Commercial Crops

Institutional Mechanism created under the Mission and its functioning

  • NFSM Structure at the National level
    • A General Council [GC] at the National level has been constituted under the chairmanship of the Union Agriculture Minister
      • The GC is the policy making body providing suitable directives and guidance to the Mission and reviewing the overall progress and development of the scheme.
    • A National Food Security Mission Executive Committee [NFSMEC] has been constituted under the Chairmanship of Secretary; Department of Agriculture & Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, to oversee the activities of the Mission and to approve the State Action Plans
  • NFSM Structure at the State Level
    • The State Food Security Mission Executive Committees [SFSMEC] have since been constituted under the chairmanship of the respective Chief Secretaries, in all the participating States
  • NFSM Structure at the District Level
    • The Agricultural Technology Management Agency [ATMA], the autonomous body established under the Societies Registration Act, has been created at the district level for implementing Mission’s programme
    • District Food Security Mission Executive Committee [DFSMEC] at the District level, have been duly constituted by all the sampled districts of the implementing States for project formulation, implementation and monitoring of the scheme components

 

 Mission Interventions

  • Various interventions proposed in the NFSM are as follows:
    • Farmers’ Field School [FFS]
      • Farmers’ Field Schools are organized on farmers’ fields to provide practical knowledge about the incidence of various pests and diseases on the crops and their management practices
    • Integrated Pest Management [IPM]
      • A number of pests and diseases affect the productivity of pulse crops
      • Hence, an integrated approach to manage their incidence and minimize the loss to the crop productivity
    • Plant Protection Chemicals
      • If biological control measures do not result in effective control of various pests and diseases, then use of chemical pesticides and fungicides becomes necessary
      • For timely control of these pests, Plant Protection chemicals are provided to pulse growing farmers with financial assistance
    • Weedicides
      • Weeds compete with the crop plants for water, nutrients, sunshine etc.
      • Therefore, infestation with weeds affects the water and nutrients’ uptake efficiency of the crop plants.
      • In order to promote timely and better management of weeds, weedicides are provided to pulse growing farmers
    • Demonstrations
      • Demonstrations of improved package of practices in wheat and pulses are organized with financial assistance
      • In these demonstrations inputs like seed, fertilizers and plant protection chemicals are provided to farmers
    • Seed minikits
      • Seed minikits of new and promising varieties of wheat are distributed among the farmers free of cost, to assess the performance of these varieties in our State in comparison to the existing varieties
    • Micronutrients
      • Deficiency of micronutrients affects the productivity of crops. Therefore, financial assistance on micronutrients per hectare are provided to farmers
    • Gypsum
      • Gypsum is the cheapest source of Sulphur which is an essential element for plants
      • Widespread Sulphur deficiency is being reported from various parts of the State.
      • Therefore, financial assistance on gypsum is provided to farmers
    • Farm Machinery
      • To improve the efficiency of farming operations and to reduce the cost of cultivation, assistance on farm machinery is provided to farmers

 

Performance of the Mission

  • After implementation of the programme in the country and concerted efforts made by the state governments as well as Government of India:
    • The total food grains production has increased from 252.02 million tonnes in 2014-15 to 296.65 million tonnes during 2019-20, which is a 17.71% increase
    • The productivity of food grains which was 2028 kg/ha in 2014-15, has increased to 2325 kg/ha during 2019-20 (14.64% increase).
    • Especially noteworthy is the production of pulses which has increased from 17.15 million tonnes in 2014-15 to 23.15 million tonnes in 2019-20 which is about 35% increase.
  • The Mission has been able to achieve around 110 lakh ha area to be treated with Micronutrients, Bio-fertilizers, soil ameliorants/ (Gypsum/Lime/others) from 2014-15 to 2019-2020
  • Around 120 lakh ha area under Integrated Pest Management (IPM) were achieved during from 2014-15 to 2019-20
  • To strengthen mechanization at farmer’s field about 15 lakh improved farm implements were distributed under NFSM from 2014-15 to 2019-2020
  • To support to achieve objective of “harkhetkopani” & “Per Drop More Crop” , 274600 pump sets, 126967 sprinklers and around 764 lakh metres of water carrying pipes were distributed amongst the farmers under NFSM from 2014-15 to 2019-2020
  • To educate the farmers about the newer improved crop production and protection technologies at real time, 60677 cropping system based trainings for capacity building of farmers were conducted from 2014-15 to 2019-2020 and this benefitted around 18 lakh of farmers

Impact Evaluation Study on NFSM in 2017

Findings that have led to shortcomings in the mission

  • The District Consultants and Technical Assistants engaged under the mission at district level were mostly utilised for office work of routine nature and not for intended technical service and monitoring of NFSM intervention.
    • Impact evaluation report further mentioned that convening of meetings of DFSMEC was poor and in majority of cases DFSMEC meeting was combined with other review meetings of the Agriculture Department which resulted in lack of focus and in-depth deliberation
  • Also, initially Targets for production of food grains were not fixed for NFSM districts in the State
    • As a result their progress in achieving scheme objective of additional production could not be ascertained.
    • Despite an expenditure of ` 945.18 crore under NFSM in the State during 2012-16, only two per cent of the total farmers in the State had benefitted.

Recommendations in this perspective include:

    • The Government should make a firm plan and adequate internal control mechanism to utilise the available loan in time to avoid the payment of commitment charges
    • Adopting concrete criteria for selection of schemes and distribution of funds throughout the project to avoid slippage in scheme coverage and delays in their execution.
    • The Government should strengthen internal control system for strict adherence with contract management for ensuring recovery of extra cost/ excess payments, penalty for delay, deduction of additional security deposit and insurance coverage of works from the defaulting contractors in order to safeguard its interest
    • The Government should consider making suitable arrangements for third party supervision of works and strengthening quality control mechanism for conducting the quality tests to ensure execution of works according to the laid down specifications

Other Challenges/Issues and Way forward associated with the Mission

  • Need for Scaling up the role of women
    • The study revealed that the role of women in agriculture under the scheme is limited (15 percent)
    • Nearly 70% of Indian rural women are employed in agriculture and they are responsible for 60-80% of food production
    • But, it is noticed that they are always involved in labour and tolerance intensive works like transplantations and weeding operations. While, most of the rural women should be considered as farmers but they are ignored
      • Thus, in order to empower and improve the women farmer’s productivity special provision of training and capacity building of women should be made
      • Provision of special reservation or subsidized benefits should be created for the women farmer’s in the scheme
    • Formation of SHG’s
      • The participation of marginal farmers in the mission is very less
        • And, they suffer from adoption of innovative technologies, inadequate access to physical inputs and credit, disguised unemployment, food and nutritional security, price risk and low income
        • Bankers feel that these two categories of needy farmers are not credit worthy and due to small size of holdings the credit risk is high
      • Hence there is a need to create the provision of SHG’s in the scheme, through which the marginal farmers’ could gain benefit under the scheme
    • Farmer’s field school and Demonstration
      • The study shows that the less than fifty percent farmers participated in the farmer’s field school and demonstration.
      • In order to increase the participation in the farmer’s farm school and demonstration, provision of compulsory attendance should be made under the scheme.
      • Provision of monetary incentive can also be built under this component
    • Soil amelioration program
      • Though about 72% farmers got their soil tested, but more than half of the farmers did not get the report in time. Without soil testing report, they never knew about requirement of micro-nutrients and/or gypsum and lime.
    • Hence, more focus should be given on timely soil testing and soil health cards to each farmer beneficiary
    • Mobile soil testing laboratory is a good concept could be implemented in the field
    • Other recommendations
      • Management information system need to be strengthened for timely data entry and report generation which could lead to better planning and implementation of mission in succeeding years
      • Frequency of advertisements should be increased in both media as well as local level awareness building program should be launched with help of reputed NGOs of respective districts
      • Literature – Climatic zone/ sub-zone wise customized literature for package of practices of both crops should be distributed to farmers in enough quantity at regional/ district level