Intensive Farming and Dynamics of Land Use in Tamil Nadu

With the advent of Green Revolution in 1960's, India has attained food self-sufficiency. It has been of late recognized that the efforts to increase agriculture production through intensive farming results in the form of natural resource degradation like decline in ground water level, deterioration of soil quality, loss of biodiversity and changes in land use pattern over the years. This study attempts to analyse the implications of intensive farming on dynamics of land use, because as land use changes, the proportion of land allotted for agricultural and non-agricultural uses will be changed. With this objective, the study has been undertaken in Tamil Nadu state in India, for the period 1980 to 2010 using ordinary least square estimation technique. The results showed that intensive farming factors such as area irrigated under tube wells, paddy and sugarcane productivity were found to have significant influence over land use pattern.