Based on the traditional wisdom of the tree based farming systems followed since ages across the world, scientific community intervened to harness full benefits of agroforestry land use system and address global issues of land degradation and agricultural sustainability.

Soil and water are the two important natural resources, which are the backbone of the Indian agriculture. The prime cause for the backwardness of the farmers is reduction in soil fertility and productivity, due to massive soil erosion. Most of the farmers are depending mainly on renewable natural resources for their livelihoods. The inhabitants of the foothill region of Northwest Himalayas have degraded lands, fragmented and small land holdings and are generally resource poor.

Out of the total geographical area of India about 53% suffers from different kinds of land degradation, and Uttar Pradesh accounts for 9.06%. About 4.0 m ha (11.03%) area of the country is suffering from ravine problem. U.P. shares 1.230 m ha (31%) ravine land of the country spread over in 25 districts of the state.

Land degradation is a serious menace to food security. Salinity-related land degradation is becoming a serious challenge to food and nutritional security in developing countries. Order vertisols has problem of salinity throughout the country. The vertisols and their associates cover nearly 257 m ha of the earth

Degradation due to erosion, salinity, waterlogging, contamination, etc. reduces the quality of land. Soil and water resources are affected initially then the bioresources. Uncontrolled degradation processes lead to
desertification of land and the ecosystem functions are disturbed.

The issue of declining net sown area (NSA) has been highlighted as a major
concern for Indian agriculture in recent years. According to the Food and
Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, about 59.2 million ha of land had degraded in India by 2003