Determinants of Agricultural Land Expansion: Evidence from Indian States

Abstract

Technological intervention in agriculture has helped many developing countries not only to overcome food deficit but also supported their economic growth. On the contrary, technological intervention in agriculture is criticized by many researchers due to its adverse effects on local environmental quality. One of such arguments is its potential to change land use dynamics in developing countries (Cropper and Griffith 1994; Barbier 1997). Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) suggests that technological intervention in agriculture combined with overall economic development should eventually help to spare land from agriculture (Kumar and Agarwal, 2003). India seems to be a classic case to test above mentioned hypothesis as it is one of the early adopter of agricultural technology and has also witnessed fairly high growth since 1990s. Data used in this study is borrowed from various Government and non-government sources. Panel data regression is performed for 25 Indian states from 1990 to 2008. Our results suggest that an 'N' shaped relationship exists between agricultural land expansion and net state domestic product per capita. The results also suggest that that technology remained responsible for inducing farmers to bring additional land under agriculture instead of sparing land from agriculture.