Socioeconomic and biophysical drivers of agricultural intensification in india : a dynamic panel analysis using remotely-sensed data and administrative surveys (an economic characterization of india's land use change)

Abstract

Agriculture is not only the primary source of food for the population of ~1.3 billion people in India but also a source of livelihood, directly or indirectly for more than 50% of its working population. It is also the major source of raw material for agro-based industries in India. A growing population puts pressure on the agricultural sector and hence drives the need to increase food production which can be met by increasing productivity or extending cropping to non-agricultural land. We conduct a Spatio-temporal analysis of district-wise cropland use dynamics using high-resolution raster data obtained from ISRO's Bhuvan portal from 2005-2014. We have evaluated the land-use changes using satellite data combined with coarse administrative surveys. Next, we estimate rst-order transition probabilities using Logistic Regression to see the in uence of the factors that drive these changes.