Land use categories

Also called: Land utilisation classification, Nine-fold land-use classification · Topic: Land Use, Farming Systems and Cropping Seasons in India · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 1 "Resources and Development"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Land Resources and Agriculture"

Meaning

Land use categories are the nine standard classes used in land revenue records (the state offices that keep land and tax records). Every hectare of India's reporting area is placed in exactly one class, so the nine classes always add up to the reporting area. They show how much land is under forest, farming, fallow, pasture or non-farm uses. Planners use them to find spare land for growing food, to track the loss of farmland, and to measure the gap from India's forest goal.

Explanation

Two "areas": the base for the nine categories

• Geographical area is India's total area inside its borders. It is about 3.28 million sq km, or about 32.87 crore ha.
• It is measured by the Survey of India. The official figures come from the Office of the Surveyor General of India [2].

• It stays fixed. It changes only if the boundary changes.

• Reporting area is the area for which land revenue departments keep land-use records. It is about 30.8 crore ha, which is about 93% of the geographical area.

• It is the area shown in the village papers. Village accountants (the patwari or lekhpal) keep these papers [2].
• Village papers are not made for forest areas, although the size of the forest is known. Some tracts have no village papers at all. For these gaps, estimates from the Agricultural Census (1995-96 and 2000-01) are used [2].

• Result: reporting area changes over time as revenue estimates are revised.

• Why about 7% is missing from the records:

• Most north-eastern states except Assam do not report land use fully. Much land there is owned by the community or by tribes and is used for shifting cultivation, so there are no regular village papers.
• Areas occupied by Pakistan and China (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Aksai Chin) have not been surveyed.

The nine categories

1. Area classified as forest: land the government has notified (officially declared) as forest under any law, whether or not trees grow on it. Crops and grazing areas inside forests still count as forest area [2].
2. Barren and wasteland (officially "barren and un-culturable land"): land that cannot be farmed with present technology, or could be farmed only at a very high cost. Examples are barren hills, deserts and ravines (deep gullies cut by running water) [2].
3. Land put to non-agricultural uses: settlements, roads, railways, canals, industry and shops. It also includes land under water, such as rivers and canals [2].
4. Permanent pastures and grazing land: all grazing land, including village common grazing land [2]. Most of it is owned by the village panchayat or the government.
5. Miscellaneous tree crops and groves: land used for farming but not counted in net sown area. It is mostly private. It includes casuarina trees, thatching grasses, bamboo bushes and groves for fuel that are not orchards [2]. In official statistics, orchards are counted in net sown area [2].
6. Culturable wasteland: land fit for farming that has not been farmed for 5 years or more in a row, including the current year. It may be covered with shrubs and scrub jungle [2]. It can be reclaimed (brought back under farming).
7. Current fallow: land left unfarmed during the current year [2], which is 1 agricultural year or less. Leaving it fallow lets the soil rest and recover its fertility naturally. This is a cheap, traditional way to keep soil fertile.
8. Fallow other than current fallow: land out of farming for not less than 1 year and not more than 5 years [2].
9. Net sown area (NSA): the total area sown with crops and orchards. Land sown more than once in a year is counted only once [2].

How land moves between categories

• Fallow land moves along a time ladder:
• Current fallow (1 year or less) → other fallow (1 to 5 years) → culturable wasteland (more than 5 years).

• If land is sown again, it moves back to net sown area.

• Non-agricultural uses keep growing:

• Towns, industry and infrastructure expand.

• The land usually comes out of farmland, culturable wasteland or pasture.

• "Forest area" can rise on paper:

• New land is notified as forest, and the category grows.

• Real tree cover may not change. NCERT gives an exercise on this: forest share rose through notification, not tree planting.

• Measures built on NSA:

• Gross cropped area (GCA) counts land once for every sowing in a year. It is also called total cropped area [2].
• Area sown more than once = GCA − NSA [2].
• Cropping intensity = (GCA ÷ NSA) × 100. A higher value means the same land is used more times in a year.

Class 10 grouping: the nine classes put into five heads

Class 10 head	Categories inside it
1. Forests	(i) Area classified as forest
2. Land not available for cultivation	(ii) Barren and wasteland; (iii) Non-agricultural uses
3. Other uncultivated land (excluding fallow)	(iv) Permanent pastures; (v) Misc. tree crops and groves; (vi) Culturable wasteland
4. Fallow lands	(vii) Current fallow; (viii) Other fallow
5. Net sown area	(ix) Net sown area

Where it occurs

• All of India's reporting area, about 30.8 crore ha, is recorded in these classes. The records are kept in village papers by the patwari or lekhpal [2].
• Gaps in coverage: most north-eastern states except Assam, and the unsurveyed areas held by Pakistan and China in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Aksai Chin).
• Net sown area over 80% of total area: Punjab and Haryana.
• They have flat alluvial plains and canal and tubewell irrigation.

• They were the core of the Green Revolution (1960s).

• Net sown area under 10%: Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The reasons are:

• Relief: steep hills leave little flat land.
• Forests: dense forest covers most of the land. In ISFR 2023, eight states and UTs have forest cover above 75%: Mizoram, Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura and Manipur [3].

• Shifting cultivation (jhum): a plot is cleared, farmed for a few years and then left to recover. Much land is therefore fallow at any time.

• Barren and wasteland example: the ravines of the Chambal valley in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

• Actual forest cover is measured separately by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) using satellite data. FSI publishes it every two years in the India State of Forest Report (ISFR).
• In ISFR 2023, forest cover is 7,15,343 sq km (21.76%), and forest and tree cover together is 8,27,357 sq km (25.17%) [3].
• The biggest gains in forest and tree cover were in Chhattisgarh (684 sq km) > Uttar Pradesh (559) = Odisha (559) > Rajasthan (394) [3].

Don't confuse with

• Geographical area vs reporting area: geographical area (about 32.87 crore ha) is fixed and measured by the Survey of India. Only the reporting area (about 30.8 crore ha) equals the total of the nine categories.
• Area classified as forest vs forest cover: the first is a legal label in revenue records and can rise through notification alone. Forest cover is the real tree canopy measured from satellites by FSI in the ISFR (21.76% in 2023) [3].
• Culturable wasteland vs barren and wasteland: culturable wasteland has been unfarmed for more than 5 years but can be reclaimed. Barren land cannot be farmed with present technology.
• Net sown area vs gross cropped area: NSA counts each plot once. GCA counts it once for every sowing in a year [2].

Prelims Hooks

• The nine categories add up to the reporting area, not the geographical area. Records cover only about 93% of India's 3.28 million sq km.
• Fallow time limits: current fallow is 1 year or less, other fallow is more than 1 year but less than 5 years, and culturable wasteland is more than 5 years [2].
• Trap: "marginal land" is not a land-use category. "Marginal" refers to holding size (less than 1 ha).
• Orchards are counted in net sown area. Casuarina, bamboo bushes, thatching grasses and fuel groves go under miscellaneous tree crops and groves [2].
• Land under water (rivers, canals) is counted under land put to non-agricultural uses [2].
• NSA is over 80% in Punjab and Haryana and under 10% in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and the A&N Islands. The 33% forest goal dates from the Forest Policy of 1952 and was kept in the National Forest Policy 1988.

Mains Points

• Weak land data (GS-I, GS-III): about 7% of India is outside the records, and forest and north-eastern figures rely on estimates such as Agricultural Census data [2]. "Recorded forest" is a legal label, not a count of trees.

• Response: check revenue records against satellite-based maps from FSI and ISRO/NRSC so that land-use planning rests on correct data.

• Forest gap (GS-III): forest cover of 21.76% is well below the 33% goal. Since ISFR 2021, forest cover rose by only 156 sq km, while tree cover rose by 1,289 sq km [3].

• Response: agroforestry (growing trees along with crops), restoring degraded forest, and planting on culturable wasteland.

• Room to grow food without clearing forest (GS-III): fallows and culturable wasteland are the main land reserve. If other fallow land farmed once every two or three years is added, NSA would be about 54% of reporting area (NCERT).

• Response: watershed development, soil-health care and irrigation can bring this land back under crops. Higher cropping intensity gets more harvests from existing land.
• This eases the pressure from growing non-agricultural uses, which take farmland and the panchayat grazing land that landless and marginal farmers depend on as a common property resource.

Related concepts

• Reporting area
• Area classified as forest
• Barren and wasteland
• Land put to non-agricultural uses
• Permanent pastures and grazing land
• Culturable wasteland
• Current fallow
• Fallow other than current fallow
• Net sown area

Read more

• Land-use accounting: reporting area and the nine categories