As per the latest Land Use Statistics-at a glance, the details of arable land in the country for the year 2009-10 to 2018-19 is available as follows;

 (in Thousand Hectare)

Year	Arable Land
2009-10	1,82,179
2010-11	1,82,010
2011-12	1,81,955
2012-13	1,82,086
2013-14	1,81,849
2014-15	1,81,829
2015-16	1,81,603
2016-17	1,81,133
2017-18	1,81,064
2018-19	1,80,888

 

Source: Directorate of Economics & Statistics, DA&FW.

As per the Seventh Schedule of Constitution of India, land comes under the purview of State Governments. Therefore State government are to take suitable steps to check diversion of arable land for commercial non agricultural purposes. However, Government of India supplements the efforts of States, through appropriate policy measures and budgetary support. Under the National Policy for Farmers – 2007 (NPF-2007), State Governments have been advised to earmark lands with low biological potential such as uncultivable land, land affected by salinity, acidity, etc., for non-agricultural development activities, including industrial and construction. National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy – 2007 (NRRP-2007) has also recommended that as far as possible, projects may be set up on waste land, degraded land or un-irrigated land and acquisition of irrigated, multi-cropped agricultural land for non-agricultural uses may be kept to the minimum or avoided, to the extent possible. 

 

This information was given by the Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar in a written reply in Rajya Sabha today.

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