Degraded and wastelands of India: status and spatial distribution
Sustainable agricultural development and food security will be one of the key challenges for India in this century. Around 70% of the India’s population is living in rural area with agriculture as their livelihood support system. The vast majority of Indian farmers are small and marginal. Their farm size is decreasing further due to population growth. And the quality of the land is deteriorating due to heightened nutrient mining, soil erosion, increasing water scarcity, adverse impacts of climate change and accumulation of toxic elements in soil and water. Land degradation, like climate change, is an anthropogenic induced process and poses biggest threat to sustainable livelihood security of the farming communities across the country. All of these factors combined with increased rate of land degradation are contributing towards decline in agricultural productivity leading to food insecurity. This report builds-on and integrates work done by different institutes of the ICAR and the Department of Space in the area of degraded and wastelands.