Since late nineteen, there has been ever increasing concern for adverse environmental impacts of intensive arable farming in varied land situations. Concerns like pollution of waters due to excess use of insecticides/pesticides, indiscriminate use of inorganic fertilizers and excessive irrigation under canal systems have attracted world wide attention in recent times. During the mid-sixties, the major goal of Indian agriculture was to increase food-grain production to cope up with the ever-increasing population. A composite strategy of introduction of high yielding varieties along with assured irrigation and fertilizers, and institutional support were provided to achieve quantum jump in agricultural production, which in turn provided additional employment in rural sector. A sizable investment has been made in creating assured irrigation facilities through major and medium irrigation projects with the target to increase food grain to a tune of 4 t/ha-5 t/ha in long term without causing any adverse effects on environment. Unfortunately, the introduction of canal irrigation resulted into development of soil salinity and shallow water-table in arid and semi-arid regions, which has serious negative impact on agricultural environment in the areas covered under canal irrigation systems. Despite massive invertment in creating canal irrigation systems, the present level of food grain production under canal command area is only around 1.7 t/ha (Satpate, 1988). The basic principal of soil and water conservation is to use the land according to its capability and treat the land according to its Performance (Tideman, 1996). The production performance of a crop is directly guided by soil characteristics viz., soil depth, texture, slope, water-holding capacity, internal drainage, etc. Based on these criteria, land has been classified in eight categories called 'land capability classes'. The first four land capability classes are considered suitable for crop production. The remaining four land capabilities classes are considered fit for pasture, wood lots and wild-life use. The choice of crops and cropping patterns based on capabilities in order to produce higher returns per unit area with adequate provision of conserving the natural resource (Van wambeke and Rossiter, 1987). Under the irrigated conditions these land capabilities are called 'land irrigability classes'. Of late researchers and planners have laid much emphasis on 'Land Capability Classes' as such to achieve sustainability in agricultural production(Alagh, 1990). Therefore, what is urgently called for is an appropriate land use policy so that optimal use of land resources based on land capability or sustainability is taken care of (Khosoo and Deekshatulu, 1992). In the present analysis, an attempt has been made to document the crop production under different land irrigability classes and its impact on natural resources like soil and other causative factors in semi-arid region of Gujarat State, India.
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