Off-Season Agriculture Encroachment in the Uplands of Northern Pakistan: Need for Sustainable Land Management

Muhammad Khurshid, Mohammad Nafees, Abdullah Khan, He Yin, Wahid Ullah, Wajid Rashid, Heesup Han and Akhtar Hussain Lashari
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Muhammad Khurshid: Department of Environmental Sciences, The University of Haripur, Haripur 22620, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Mohammad Nafees: Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Peshawar, Peshawar 25000, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Abdullah Khan: Department of Environmental Sciences, The University of Haripur, Haripur 22620, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
He Yin: Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH 5190, USA
Wahid Ullah: Pakistan Study Center, Faculty of Foreign Studies, Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, Ganzhou 341000, China
Wajid Rashid: Department of Environmental & Conservation Sciences, University of Swat, Swat 19130, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Heesup Han: College of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Sejong University, Seoul 05006, Korea
Akhtar Hussain Lashari: School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: Agriculture encroachment over alpine pastoral land is posing serious threats to the sustainable use of natural resources and agro-pastoral systems in the upland environment. This study aimed to understand the scenario of agriculture encroachment within a sustainable land management context in Northern Pakistan’s uplands (Buhrawai). Both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches were used for the primary data collection on the pattern of cropland expansion, cropland productivity, agrochemical inputs, and perceived socio-ecological system. The results showed that off-season agriculture has emerged as a cash-earning livelihood activity, largely adopted by decade-old and influential tenant communities in the study areas. During the last few decades, this off-season agriculture regularly expanded from lower- to higher-elevation (2980–3800 m) areas, and extensively encroached on accessible pastoral areas in the bottomlands. Cultivation of the two major vegetable crops, i.e., peas and potatoes, occurred on a total of 417.4 ha of pastoral land, where pea cultivation predominantly occurred on 367.2 ha and potato cultivation on 50.2 ha of pastoral land. We found that repeated cultivation of the same crops, without crop rotation and land management practices, significantly reduced land productivity with time; the crop productivity was recorded to be the highest in the virgin cultivated land (pea: 1.8 tons/ha and potato: 14.8 tons/ha) and the lowest in the old-cultivated land (pea: 0.6 tons/ha and potato: 8.2 tons/ha). As a result of this trend, farmers are abandoning unproductive agricultural land and subsequently starting cultivation in other marginal areas, even cultivating crops on steeper slopes beyond the permissible level (16°). These findings revealed that farmers have extensively used key pastoral areas for cultivation, and they have deprived landless pastoralists of their traditional grazing land in the uplands. Furthermore, this agriculture encroachment imposed serious pressure on the pastoralists’ livelihoods and the upland ecosystem on which they rely. Therefore, policies and regulations that promote sustainable land management are much needed to ensure socio-economic equity and ecological integrity in the uplands of Northern Pakistan.

Keywords: agriculture; pastoralists; uplands; socio-ecological system; mountains; ecosystem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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