5. Agricultural Land Use Patterns

This chapter focuses on the land use statistics of the state of Uttar Pradesh in context of general land use characteristics which include different categories of land occupied to the total reporting area of the state, viz., area devoted to forests, barren land, land not available for utilization, culturable waste, pastures, miscellaneous trees, current fallow, other than current fallow and net sown area. This chapter portrays district-wise percentage distribution of the total or gross cropped area, net sown area and area sown more than once. It also depicts the changes in the cropping patterns in the state during four periods of time, i.e. 1995–2000, 2000–2005, 2005–2010 and 2010–2015. The trends of growth in area, production and yields of all major crops including the individual crops were computed for the period of 1995–1996 to 2014–2015 by applying the Least Square Growth formula. The ranking of crops as first, second and third illustrates the proportion of area under these crops in the districts of the state. Crop-combination regions were delineated for the state applying Doi’s method. At the end of the chapter, intensity of cropping in different districts presents the intensive use of land in the state during different periods of time.