Land resources

The essentials

Land use records maintained in India follow a nine-fold classification: forests; land put to non-agricultural uses; barren and wastelands; area under permanent pastures and grazing lands; area under miscellaneous tree crops and groves; culturable wasteland; current fallow; fallow other than current fallow; and net sown area.

India's agriculture has three cropping seasons. Kharif crops are grown with the south-west monsoon (rice, cotton, jowar, bajra, maize). Rabi crops are sown in October–November and harvested in spring (wheat, gram, mustard). Zaid is a short summer season after the rabi harvest (vegetables, fruits, fodder crops).

Key points

• Culturable wasteland: land left uncultivated for more than five years.
• Current fallow: land left uncultivated for one agricultural year or less.
• Fallow other than current fallow: land left uncultivated for more than one year but less than five years.
• Net sown area: area sown with crops and harvested; area sown more than once in a year plus net sown area gives gross cropped area.
• Cropping intensity = Gross cropped area ÷ Net sown area × 100.
• Dryland farming is practised where annual rainfall is less than 75 cm (drought-resistant crops like ragi, bajra, moong, gram); wetland farming where rainfall exceeds the soil moisture needs of plants.
• Common property resources (community forests, pastures, village water bodies) provide fodder, fuel, fruits and fibre, and are especially important for landless people, marginal farmers and women.
• Problems of Indian agriculture: dependence on erratic monsoon, low productivity, financial constraints and indebtedness, lack of land reforms, small and fragmented landholdings, lack of commercialisation, underemployment and degradation of cultivable land.

Exam tips

Practise the cropping intensity formula and learn the fallow time limits exactly.

Common mistakes

Culturable wasteland and current fallow differ by duration: more than five years versus one year or less.