Creating awareness among farmers for Nutri Cereals (Millets)
- August 3, 2021
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
Creating awareness among farmers for Nutri Cereals (Millets)
Subject: Agriculture
Context: The Government, under the Sub Mission on National Food Security Mission (NFSM)- Nutri Cereals is creating awareness among farmers for Nutri Cereals (Millets) such as ragi, sorghum, bajra and small millets through demonstration and training.
Concept:
National Food Security Mission (NFSM) – Nutri Cereals
Under NFSM–Nutri Cereals, incentives are provided to the farmers, through the state governments, on crop production and protection technologies, cropping system based demonstrations, production & distribution of seeds of newly released varieties/ hybrids, Integrated Nutrient and Pest Management techniques, improved farm implements/tools/ resource conservation machineries, water saving devices, capacity building of farmers through trainings during cropping season, organizing events / workshops, distribution of seed minikits, publicity through print and electronic media etc. The interventions such as formation of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) for Nutri Cereals, setting up Centers of Excellence (CoE) and seed hubs for Nutri Cereals have also been supported under NFSM.
Nutri-Cereals:
- India is one of the important consumer and producer of Nutri-cereals in the world. Group of crops comprising sorghum (Jowar), pearl millet (Bajra), finger millet (Ragi/Mandua) and small millets viz; little millet (Kutki), kodo millet (Kodo), barnyard millet (Sawa/Jhangora), foxtail millet (Kangni/Kakun), proso millet (Cheena) all together comes under Millets which is now called as ‘Nutri-Cereals’ due to their high nutritive value.
- Nutri-cereals were important crops in the country with higher area coverage as compared to wheat and rice before green revolution period.
- After launching green revolution, the area of Nutri-cereals drastically reduced due to shifting of irrigated area from Nutri-cereals to more remunerative crops like rice, wheat and sugarcane.
- At present, Nutri-cereals are grown in resource poor agro-climatic regions, hilly & tribal areas of the country in rainfed conditions.
- Nutri-cereals are known for nutri-rich content and having characteristics like drought tolerance, photo-insensitivity and resilient to climate change etc. Nutri-cereals are grown in arid and semi-arid tracts under low rainfall (200-600 mm) conditions, where fine cereals like wheat and rice cannot be grown profitably.