An Investigation of Factors for Changing Land Use Pattern in Bihar with a Piercing Insight on Current Fallow Lands

Abstract

In the present study, an effort has been made to analyze the factors responsible for changes in land use pattern especially increasing current fallow lands, shrinking net sown area and shifting of lands for non-agricultural purposes in the state. The categories of land such as barren land, culturable waste land and permanent pastures and grazing land have shown declining trend. Further, declining trend in net sown area and other fallow lands has been noticed. Current fallows reduced over the period till 2000s but it began to rise since 2000s afterwards. The rainfall and road length did have significant impact on the level of current fallows. Erratic monsoon and scarcity of labour during the study period of present century resulted/led to accumulation of current fallow lands. It was further observed that the non-agricultural use of land was identified as the dominant factor for changes in common lands as it affected the current fallows negatively. It is a challenging task for policy makers to maximize the income of farming community from continuous decline in net sown area, deteriorating climatic condition (erratic monsoon) as well as labour scarce conditions thus finally resulting in aggregation of current fallows. In order to discourage/ arrest the rising tendency in current fallows or put the current fallows under profitable cultivation, cheap source of irrigation is needed to be made available to cultivators