Betterment of farming community Livelihood Security of Ladhak people ICAR-NBSS&LUP, NEW DELHI Scientist working in Leh
The team of Indian Council of Agricultural Research – National Bureau of Soil Survey & Land Use Planning, New Delhi carried out detailed soil survey on 1:10000 scale of Leh block from August 17th 2018 The project Leader, Dr. (Mrs). Jaya N. Surya, Principal scientist reported that they intensively collected surface as well as profile samples from various landforms and cultivated areas of pheyang, spituk, phey, choglamsar and saboo villages and tested in Delhi laboratory. She replied that people of Leh have very limited resources, the climate change and human resource pressure converts good lands into non agricultural use very rapidly. Soil resource are varied. Hence their efforts to identify the constraints and potentials of land resources for increasing farmers income by ensuring better land use options and adopting new technologies for livelihood security of the region. The soils of valleys has good potential but farmers need alternative land use options such as agri-horti, medicinal plants, vegetable cultivations. She replied that they are working on project “Land Resource Inventory for farm planning on 1: 10000 scale of Leh block, Leh district using Geospatial techniques” and will come up with good data set for the betterment of farming community and natural resource management on sustainable basis. Govt of India promoting Soil healthcards and ICAR is also focusing on alternative land use options for increasing farmers income .