The need for preserving farmland: A case study from a predominantly agrarian economy (India)

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During the last few decades population of the world has increased tremendously. This increase was more pronounced among the developing and underdeveloped countries. This results in high pressure on the land. This alarming population growth has resulted in rapid urbanisation and urban expansion because rural areas are unable to provide employment opportunities resulting in mass migration to urban areas. This urban expansion is encroaching upon fertile agricultural land. The present study makes an attempt to draw factual use of land on the map to show precise locational insight about the use of land, further to eliminate misuse in terms of the physical, economic, social and cultural factors. Further it also estimates the loss of agricultural land and the resultant loss of agricultural products, which has been incurred by expansion of urban centres. The case study was done on Indian city, where agriculture is still the main occupation of the countries 70% population. But with rapidly growing population any shortage of agricultural products have far reaching implications both politically and socially. Saharanpur city was chosen as the study area which is one of the class I city situated in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh (India). The initial development of Saharanpur city is due to its well-developed agricultural hinterland. But in the last few years, several industries have come up and the city is now shedding its agrarian character by adopting secondary and tertiary economic activities. The study is based on remotely sensed data and processed in GIS environment using ILWIS software. The result clearly points towards substantial loss of agricultural land due to expansion of Saharanpur city. Interestingly non-built-up development of the city has caused maximum loss.