Land Resource Inventory (1:10000 scale) towards Land Use Planning for Arresting Land Degradation, Combating Climate Change and Ensuring Food Security

摘要

It is my honour and privilege to deliver 3rd Dr. S.N. Saxena Memorial Lecture in the memory of late Dr. S.N. Saxena. I am grateful to the Indian Society of Soil Science for giving this opportunity.Consequent upon the advent of green revolution in India, a significant good investment has been made in agricultural research and development, both in public and private sectors, which is growing @ 9% per annum. From 1950 to 1980, horizontal expansion ofagriculture was one of the objectives and the investment was made on land reforms, land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation, watershed management and modernization of land records. Area under agriculture has expanded from 95 to 126 million hectare (Mha). As a result, food grain production has increased five fold, from 50 million tonnes (Mt) in 1950-51 to 250 Mt in 2011-12 (NBSS&LUP 2015a). During the period, production of horticultural and fish farm produce have increased by 6 and 9 times, respectively. Considering the base year of 1950-51, milk and egg production have increased by 6 and 27 times, respectively. However, during the period, unplanned and haphazard increase in area under different land uses was prominent. For example, in West Bengal, area under rice has gone up from 3.9 to 5.63 Mha and the area under potato and jute increased six times, whereas the area under different alternate land uses has decreased. In the journey of seven decades of green revolution, about 121 Mha areas suffered from various kinds and degrees of degradation (Maji et al. 2010). Recent data indicate that 64 out of 142 Mha of net cultivable area are affected with one or other kind of degradation (NBSS&LUP 2015a). In the recent years, there was exponential increase in fertilizerconsumption however, productivity of food grains showed linear gains only. It is attributed to inappropriate land use planning of growing crops in the soils out of their capability/suitability domain. Intensive agriculture with total disregard to adequate conservation measures affected all lands, the hills, plateau and desert. Erosion on Darjeeling hills and Chotanagpur plateau intensified the problem of increasing acidity in the flood plains of Bengal (NBSS&LUP 2012). Erosion and subsequent transportation of sediment from the Eastern Himalayas may be one of the reasons for arsenic contamination in the flood plains of the Bengal basin. Rising pH in the desert resulted in development of aerosols due to the faulty management practices on dunes (Singh and Singh 2013). Aerosols also affected the good adjoining agricultural land in the desert of Rajasthan (Pratap Narain and Singh 2006).