INTEGRATION OF LAND EVALUATION SYSTEM SITH SOCIOECONOMICVARIABLES: A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH USING GIS

摘要

Declining per capita arable land against increasing demand for agricultural production highly stress on limited land resources of Bangladesh. During last four decades, the government and development partners emphasized on modern technological adoption to increase land productivity for the wellbeing of the poor farmers. Growth stagnation and land productivity decline in the recent past has been reported. Thus, new thought for further sustainable agricultural development is of profound importance. In this context, land is the basic resource for targeting the development approach, considering the socioeconomic constraints besides the available technology. Land suitability based on AEZ data has now become a common land evaluation system (LES) in the agricultural planning process. In evaluating land suitability, some representative land utilization types (LUTs) are considered. The LUTs chosen are based on the present practices and potential land use types, and crop management. Suitability ratings of soils, landform, and climate and inundation factors for each LUT are developed and fed into the LES. Using GIS analytical tools different layers of land factors are integrated to provide suitability of individual LUT in the form of GIS layers and also as tabular outputs. This however, does not include socioeconomic consideration in evaluating the land resources and its opportunities. It is well documented that the farmer's socioeconomic situation highly influences his decision making in crop production and thus influencing the overall agricultural growth and land productivity. The LES has further improved incorporating different socioeconomic variables. Sub-district level primary and secondary socioeconomic data is integrated in the physical suitability modeling result to obtain the optimum land use type. This integration is done based on the spatial reference of land units under GIS environment. The LES developed through a pilot study on the Tangail district. In this district, a variety of biophysical and environmental conditions prevail and about 20 different major and minor crops are grown. About 30 different cropping patterns were studied in this LES approach and identified some potential patterns with high economic viability. This paper explains such an approach of integrating socioeconomic parameters into the biophysical and climatic constraints of agricultural development in Bangladesh as this has been of particular concern in using AEZ/GIS as planning tools for the farmer's wellbeing.