About 75 pc rural households own land up to 1 hectare: Survey

As much as 75.42 per cent of total rural households are marginal land owners, who own up to one hectare, while the proportion of families having more than 10 hectares is 0.24 per cent, says a government survey.
"Within the rural households, the marginal land owners (possessing more than 0.002 but less than or equal to 1 hectare of land) constituted the highest proportion (75.42per cent) of total rural households," the National Sample Survey's 70th Round on Land and Livestock Holdings in January-December, 2013, said.
According to survey a large land owners (possessing land more than 10 hectares) constituted the lowest proportion (0.24 per cent) of the total households.

The landless category (possessing land less than or equal 0.002 hectare) constituted 7.41 per cent of rural households.
In terms of percentage of total area owned, the largest category was the marginal land owners owing 29.75 per cent of the total land area owned.
Among all the ownership holdings, the families with self-employed in cultivation as the major source of income, owned the highest share of land (81.4 per cent of total land) with average area owned 1.104 hectares.

Share of land owned by the families with self-employed in livestock farming and the households with self-employed in other agricultural activities were 1.5 per cent each of the total land area owned.

As much as 88.6 per cent of the household operational holdings were operated for the whole agricultural year, whereas 8.5 per cent was operated only during July-December, 2012, and 2.9 per cent only during January-June, 2013.
The land use pattern shows that the estimated land area used for crop production was around 94.7 per cent during the season July-December, 2012 and around 79 per cent during the season January-June, 2013.
The proportion of areas of land used for non-agricultural purposes were 2.83 per cent and 13.85 per cent in these two periods respectively.
The highest percentage of area was used for growing cereals in both the periods July-December, 2012 (56.21 per cent) and January-June, 2013 (57.74 per cent). The next major use of land was for production of oil seeds (13.75 per cent and 7.34per cent) and pulses (6.30 per cent and 10.20 per cent) in the two seasons respectively.