1National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning, Regional Centre, Hebbal, Bangalore—560 024.
2Karnataka State Remote Sensing Application Centre, Bangalore—560 030. E-mail: scrkumar@yahoo.com
This study has developed an indexing approach and has applied it for characterizing sustainable land management indicators and mapping at the farm level. Sustainability of farming in the long-run depends upon soilcare and reducing the levels of land degradation. Marginal and small farmers have been found adopting sustainable land management practices more than that by the large farmers. The regression analysis has been carried out for sustainability index as dependent variable and three variables, viz. ecological safety (x1), economic security (x2) and social stability (x3) as independent variables. The regression model (Y = 1.6 + 0.29x1 + 0.45x2 + 0.25x3) has explained 68 per cent contribution sustainability of farms. Marginal and small farmers have been found using less of external inputs and with intensive cultivation are able to manage the land resource. The low level of sustainability among large farmers could be attributed to the lack of integrated approach to cultivation and poor farm management, coupled with heavy dependence on the purchased inputs.
