A Study of Socio-Economic Factors Influencing Adoption of Farm Level Soil and Water Conservation Practices in the Riverine Areas of North Bank Plains Zone of Assam

Soil and water are two very scarce important natural resources without which crop production is not possible. Soil degradation due to erosion and the depletion of ground water resources are the two major environmental problems threatening agricultural production and productivity in the riverine belt of Assam. The riverine belt is spread over as the alluvial land forms on the recent flood plain of the river Brahmaputra and its perennial tributaries. These are the riverine land forms and river islands that are periodically formed and eroded due to meandering, braiding and the changing course of the rivers. These land situations are locally known as ‘Char land’ or ‘Chapari’ in Assam. Soils are formed on the riverine alluvium deposits brought down from the adjacent Assam Himalayas by the river Brahmaputra and its tributaries. Soils are therefore stratified in nature and the soil textures vary with depth and the top layer of the soil (30-90 cm thickness) has a sandy or silty loam texture which is underlined by thick layers of relatively coarse sands. The profile development is therefore poor and belongs to the order ‘entisol’ and is subjected to soil erosion due to various reasons. The North Bank Plains (NBP) zone of Assam comprises a geographical area of 14,421sq km (14.42 lakh hectares), which is 18.37 per cent of the total geographical area of the state. This zone falls in a humid and sub-humid climatic belt with an average rainfall of 2741 mm per year and covers the districts of Sonitpur, Lakhimpur, Dhemaji and Darrang. The net cropped area of these four districts of the zone together is about 5.09 lakh hectares of which only about 11 per cent of land is brought under irrigation and of which about 75,000 ha is in the riverine belt. No systematic and exhaustive surveys on the natural resource land use pattern have been undertaken on the riverine areas. The present study makes an attempt to analyse the socio-economic and institutional factors that influence the adoption of various soil and water conservation practices in the riverine areas of NBP zone of Assam along with exploring the scope for diversification.