Land shaping for crop diversification and enhancing agricultural productivity in … 83 degraded lands of A&N Islands

Abstract

In Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands, about 30,000 ha area is under plantation and spice crops in hilly lands and 8,800 ha area is under rice cultivation in low-lying land. In general, hilly lands face the problem of soil erosion during wet season and water scarcity during dry season whereas coastal low-lying lands are mostly waterlogged during wet season whereas no water is available for second crop during dry season. In addition, some of these low-lying lands also face the problem of soil and water salinity due to sea water ingress. With reference to A&N Islands, eroded hilly lands, saline/waterlogged areas fall in the category of degraded land and water areas. Therefore, these low-lying areas are generally mono-cropped with low yielding rice cultivation that gives low economic returns and limits the options of livelihood. In plantation crops on hilly areas, soil conservation measures, multi-tier cropping along with introduction of micro-irrigation system may help in improving the land and water productivity. In low-lying paddy areas, appropriate agricultural land drainage coupled with land shaping techniques and other supplementary activities such as introduction of salt tolerant/ long duration high yielding rice varieties, vermi-composting may help these degraded areas for crop diversification and multiple cropping to increase the overall farm productivity, income and thus livelihood security.