Agri land shrinks by 2.76 mn hectare in last 2 decades

NEW DELHI: Agricultural land in India has shrunk by nearly two per cent in the last two decades, a fact which does not augur well for the predominate agrarian country.

Total agricultural land in India in 2008-09 was 182.385 million hectare against 185.142 million hectare in 1988-89, a fall by 2.76 million hectare, according to the data provided by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in Parliament recently.

As per the 2001 census, the percentage of population employed in agriculture was 58.2 per cent of total workers population of 402.2 million in the country, Minister of State for Agriculture Arun Yadav had informed Parliament last week.

The country witnessed a gradual decline of farm land with the progress of every year during the period, Pawar had said quoting from report of Directorate of Economics & Statistics.

Pawar said the land shrinkage did not have adverse impact on the foodgrain production which in fact saw a rise by nearly 38 per cent during 1988-89 to 2008-09.

The production of foodgrains has increased from 169.92 million tonnes in 1988-89 to 234.47 million tonnes in 2008-09, the minister said.

On steps taken to arrest the decline in the agricultural land, he said that as per the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, land falls under the purview of the state governments and, therefore, it is for the state governments to bring in suitable policy to prevent the diversion of agricultural land for non-agriculture purposes.

The Union government has formulated the National Policy for Farmers and the National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy in 2007 which also envisage prevention or minimisation in utilisation of agriculture land in non-agriculture purposes.