Department of Agricultural Economics, Extension Education and Rural Sociology CSK Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, Palampur – 176 062, Himachal Pradesh.
§The article is a part of the Ph.D. Thesis entitled, “Land use management for sustainable agricultural development in Himachal Pradesh - A temporal and spatial analysis” submitted by the first author to CSK HPKV, Palampur in 2007.
The study has been undertaken with the objectives of finding the extent of land degradation and its determinants in the mountainous regions of Himachal Pradesh by dividing the state into four zones. Multistage random sampling technique has been adopted to select the sample farmers from each zone. Logit analysis has been carried out to find the probability of different factors affecting land degradation. The factors whose effect on land degradation has been reported are: total owned land, land fragmentation, family labour, non-farm income, farm income, migration, leasing-out of land and education level of members in a household. The study has suggested some measures to minimize land degradation and consequently increase production and income levels in this difficult terrain of the country.
