Land, forests and agriculture

The first principle

Land is fixed in quantity, so a country can get more from it only by changing how each hectare is used and how much it yields. India has about 18 per cent of the world's people on 2.4 per cent of its land, so almost every gain in food since the 1960s has come from higher yields and more crops a year, while forests, farms and cities compete for the same hectares.

The core

How India's land is used

India records land use in nine categories grouped into five classes. Net sown area has stayed near 140 million hectares for decades, so growth has come from double cropping on irrigated land: gross cropped area is above 210 million hectares, a cropping intensity of over 150 per cent.

• Trends. Non agricultural uses are rising, pastures and culturable waste are shrinking, and fallow land swells in drought years.

Status of forest resources

The Forest Survey of India's India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023 puts forest and tree cover at 25.17 per cent of the country's area, of which forest cover is 21.76 per cent and tree cover outside forests 3.41 per cent. The National Forest Policy, 1988 set a goal of 33 per cent, and two thirds in the hills, so the gap is still about eight percentage points.

• Distribution. Cover is high in the north east, the Western Ghats and the central highlands, and very low in Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.
• Quality. Very dense forest is only about 3 to 4 per cent of the country's area, and open forest (canopy density 10 to 40 per cent) is almost as large as moderately dense forest. Fragmentation by roads and mines, loss of cover in the north east, and the counting of plantations, orchards and bamboo as forest cover mean that rising totals can hide falling quality.

Forests and climate change

A forest takes in carbon dioxide (CO₂) by photosynthesis and stores carbon in five pools, of which soil organic carbon is the largest; it is a net sink when growth exceeds losses from respiration, decay, felling and fire.

ISFR 2023 estimates forest carbon stock at 7,285 million tonnes of carbon, up by 81.5 million tonnes since 2021, and the total carbon stock from forest and tree cover at about 30.43 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, already about 2.29 billion tonnes above the 2005 base. India's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement promises an additional sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes by 2030. The impact on climate therefore runs both ways: according to India's reports to the United Nations climate convention, land use and forests offset about a tenth of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions, but degradation, fire and diversion for projects release stored carbon, and a warming climate itself raises fire and pest risk.

Dimensions

• Ecological. Forests in the Himalaya and Western Ghats hold soil and feed the rivers that water the plains.
• Economic. Agriculture employs over 40 per cent of workers but produces under a fifth of Gross Value Added (GVA).
• Social. Forest dwellers depend on minor forest produce, protected by the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

In practice

From food importer to food exporter

After the droughts of 1965 and 1966 India imported about 10 million tonnes of grain a year, mostly under the United States PL 480 programme, living "ship to mouth". Several reinforcing reasons explain the turnaround.

• Seeds. High yielding dwarf wheat from Mexico and IR8 rice from the Philippines, adapted under M S Swaminathan from 1966, could take heavy fertiliser without falling over, so yields doubled where water was assured.
• Water and inputs. Canals, tube wells, cheap power and subsidised fertiliser allowed two crops a year in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
• Price and purchase. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) and the Agricultural Prices Commission were set up in 1965, and minimum support price (MSP) with assured procurement removed the risk of investing in new technology.
• Research and extension. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), agricultural universities and Krishi Vigyan Kendras bred and spread new varieties.
• Diversification. Milk, horticulture and fisheries broadened the base, and liberalisation after 1991 opened export markets.

India has been the world's largest rice exporter since 2011 to 2012, with about 40 per cent of world rice trade in some years; farm exports crossed 50 billion dollars in 2022 to 2023, and foodgrain output exceeded 330 million tonnes in 2023 to 2024. The caveats matter: India still imports more than half its edible oil and some pulses, so it is a net exporter by value rather than self sufficient in every food; exporting rice means exporting scarce groundwater from Punjab; and national surplus sits beside child stunting of about 35 per cent in the National Family Health Survey 5 (2019 to 2021).

Why pulses deserved an international year

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses, led by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), because pulses serve nutrition, soils and climate at once.

• Nitrogen fixation. Rhizobium bacteria in root nodules use the enzyme nitrogenase to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia, so a pulse crop feeds itself and leaves nitrogen for the next crop, cutting the need for urea and the nitrous oxide emissions that come with it.
• Soil health and rotation. Deep roots, leaf litter and a break in cereal pest cycles raise yields in a cereal and pulse rotation.
• Water and climate. Pulses need a fraction of the water of rice and suit rainfed dryland farms.
• Nutrition. Seeds hold about 20 to 25 per cent protein, about twice that of cereals, and store well without a cold chain.

India is the world's largest producer, consumer and importer of pulses, and the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses (Union Budget 2025 to 2026) targets self reliance in tur, urad and masoor.

Climate change and food security in tropical countries

Tropical crops already grow close to their upper temperature limit, so warming hurts them more than crops in cool countries, which may even gain, and tropical farmers are poorer and less able to adapt. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (2022) finds that climate change has already slowed farm productivity growth.

• Heat stress. Heat during grain filling shrinks wheat grains; the March 2022 heatwave cut India's wheat harvest and led to an export ban in May 2022, and studies assessed by the IPCC suggest each 1°C of warming lowers global wheat yields by about 6 per cent.
• Rain. Delayed onset, long breaks and intense bursts of monsoon rain damage rainfed crops, about half of India's net sown area.
• Pests. Warmer, wetter conditions widen the range of pests and fungal disease.
• Sea level rise. Salt water enters rice fields in deltas such as the Sundarbans and the Mekong.
• Nutrient decline. Under high CO₂, rice and wheat hold less protein, zinc and iron.

Adaptation includes heat tolerant varieties from ICAR's National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (2011), micro irrigation, crop insurance, millets and better weather advisories.

Satellites for climate smart farming

• FASAL (Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agrometeorology and Land based observations), run by the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre, gives pre harvest estimates of major crops.
• YES TECH (Yield Estimation System based on Technology, 2023) blends satellite and model yields into crop cutting under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), so claims are faster and less disputed.
• NADAMS (National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Monitoring System) uses vegetation indices and soil moisture to flag drought district by district, and the Bhuvan geoportal serves crop and soil maps.
• Digital Agriculture Mission (2024) builds AgriStack, a farmer registry linked to geo referenced village maps, with a Digital Crop Survey that records the crop on every plot each season.

Issues and way forward

• Degraded forests counted as cover. Plantations and open forest inflate totals because the survey reads canopy, not ecosystem; reporting natural forest and plantations separately, and tracking very dense forest as the key indicator, would give a truer picture.
• Weakened legal protection. The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023 narrowed which lands count as forest; in February 2024 the Supreme Court ordered that the broad dictionary meaning of forest from T N Godavarman Thirumulpad v Union of India (1996) continue to apply while the challenge is heard.
• Water and soil exhaustion. Rice and wheat on cheap power have mined groundwater in the north west; the Johl Committee in Punjab (1986, and again in 2002) recommended shifting a part of the paddy area to other crops, and the Shanta Kumar Committee (2015) asked that procurement reach eastern states and crops beyond rice and wheat.
• Small holdings and low productivity. The average holding was about 1.1 hectares in the Agriculture Census 2015 to 2016; Farmer Producer Organisations and digital land records can give small farmers scale.
• Fire and slow restoration. Over a third of forest cover is fire prone, and the Green India Mission (2014) under the National Action Plan on Climate Change (2008) has restored far less than its 10 million hectare aim because funding has been slow; fire control, community forest rights and agroforestry would raise the sink cheaply.

Common confusions

• Recorded forest and forest cover. Recorded forest is a legal category; forest cover is any patch over one hectare with canopy above 10 per cent, whatever its legal status, while tree cover is smaller patches outside recorded forest.
• Carbon stock and carbon sink. Stock is the carbon stored at one time; a sink is a store that is growing, and India's NDC target is for additional stock.
• Self sufficiency and food security. Self sufficiency is national supply; food security also needs access and nutrition for every household.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: net sown area, cropping intensity, forest cover, open forest, carbon sink, NDC, Green India Mission, Green Revolution, MSP and procurement, nitrogen fixation, cereal and pulse rotation, heat stress, FASAL, YES TECH, NADAMS, AgriStack.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction (data): India State of Forest Report 2023 puts forest and tree cover at 25.17 per cent of India's area, still short of the 33 per cent goal of the National Forest Policy, 1988.
  • Introduction (report): The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report warns that tropical farming, already close to its heat limits, faces the steepest losses as the world warms.
  • Conclusion: India's next food revolution must be green in a deeper sense, raising output per drop and per unit of carbon rather than only per hectare.
  • Conclusion: Forests, pulses and satellites together offer a path where soils, water and climate gain along with the farmer.