National Food Security Mission

 National Food Security Mission (NFSM) is a Central Scheme of GOI launched in 2007 for 5 years (11th 5 Year Plan) and later continued for 5 more year (12th 5 Year Plan) to increase production and productivity of wheat, rice and pulses on a sustainable basis so as to ensure food security of the country.

 During 11th 5 year plan it helped to increase the production of rice by 10 million tons, wheat by 8 million tons and pulses by 2 million tons.

 The Mission is being continued during 12th Five Year Plan with new targets of additional production of food grains of 25 million tons of food grains comprising of 10 million tons rice, 8 million tons of wheat, 4 million tons of pulses and 3 million tons of coarse cereals by the end of 12th Five Year Plan.

The National Food Security Mission (NFSM) during the 12th Five Year Plan has five components:

1. NFSM- Rice

2. NFSM-Wheat

3. NFSM-Pulses

4. NFSM-Coarse cereals

5. NFSM-Commercial Crops

 The basic strategy of the Mission is to promote and extend improved technologies, i.e., seed, micronutrients, soil amendments, integrated pest management, farm machinery and resource conservation technologies along with capacity building of farmers.

 Under this scheme, beneficiaries can choose to draw loans from the Banks, in which case subsidy amount prescribed for a particular component for which the loan availed will be released to the Banks. Otherwise it is directly allocated to state government which distributes among them.

 11th 5 Year plan covered 15 states under NFSM-Rice, 9 states under NFSM-Wheat and 16 States under NFSM Wheat.

 12th plan aims to cover all the states of India with focus on low productive areas to bridge the yield gaps for additional production while stability in high production areas would be achieved through promotion of conservation agriculture practices.

 In Union Budget 2017-18, Rs. 1600 crore has been allocated for this scheme with target of increasing total Food grains production by 4.85 million tons in 2017-18 financial year.
In June, 2017, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers welfare has mandate all the states to include NFSM beneficiaries under Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme.

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