ABSTRACT
Sustainable agriculture implies the ability to produce food and provide nutritional security for the increasing population without reducing or putting at risk the ability to feed future generations. Over the past three decades, India has moved successfully from a food-deficit state to one that is, by-and-large, self-sufficient in production of food grains, although there are still deficits of pulses and oilseeds. According to current assessments, India’s present population of an estimated 800 million will reach one billion by the year 2000. Cropland expansion has played a relatively minor role in increased food grain production. Most increases in cropped area were due to conversion of traditional grazing lands of low productivity to cropland. In most rain-fed areas, farmers have expanded cultivation into areas of poor potential, especially in shallow red soils. Very little fertilizer was being used for coarse grains, oilseeds, and pulses, the major crops of the rain-fed agriculture.
