Landscape planning for agridevelopment at regional scale: an example from cotton growing Yavatmal district, Maharashtra, India

Abstract

The basaltic landscape planning on the hot semiarid ecosystem in cotton growing Yavatmal district, Maharashtra tends to concentrate on 52 per cent of total cultivated area with 43 per cent of rural families living below poverty line posing major problem for environmental protection and resource management. Concepts of sustainable development at regional-level planning suggested that there is a growing concern for the landscape community to develop a strategic regional agricultural planning perspective in order to assist landscape planning goals. These challenges were explored with particular reference to the cotton growing Yavatmal district in Maharashtra through baseline land resource / agronomic surveys and assessing the production potential of regional rural landscapes for crop planning. Landscape analysis, premised on the geopedological and elevation constructs, culminated in a spatial coverage of hills and ridges (12.6 per cent of total area) in northern and central parts whereas plateaus (29.3 per cent) in association with isolated hills, mesas and butte and escarpments (17.7 per cent), pediplains (28.8 per cent) and plains (8.1 per cent) in south western parts of the district. Regional level analysis revealed spatially variable soil typologies dominated by vertisols and vertic intergrades. An exploration and brief account of integration landscape planning was discussed with some reflections on the experience and highlighting some of the problems and potentials of this approach within the regional context.