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.