1. India has extensive flat and fertile plains. They have made India an agricultural country. Various civilizations have originated, blossomed and bore fruit.
2. 51 % of the total geographical area of the country is under cultivation. No other country in the world has such a large area under agriculture. This is the most satisfactory feature of land-use pattern in India.
3. Agriculture provides not only foodgrains to the teeming millions of population but also raw material to industries. Agriculture in India forms the backbone of the economy.
4. Area under fallow land has come down from 7% to 5% smce Independence. This has been possible due to greater use of manure/ and fertilisers and adoption of new techniques and technologies for conserving soil moisture in such lands.
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5. Despite very meagre land under pastures and meadows India is able to; feed the large population of drought animals and bovine cattle.
6. Area under forests is constantly increasing due to our efforts like afforestation and planting trees under various programmes.
7. Forest cover in India is as low as 21% of the total geographical area. For balanced development of a country it is necessary that it must have 33.3% forest cover. Population pressure for residential and other activities like agriculture, industries, trade and commerce have depleted the forest cover. The low percentage of forest land had resulted in the ecological imbalances.
Disequilibrium between growing population and dwindling forest cover in the country has worsened the situations. Presence of carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere and temperature has increased.
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This is known as ‘green house’ effect. There is a danger of snowcaps being melted and flooding the low lying thickly populated areas, thus threatening the very existence of large population.