A study of Agricultural land conversion into Bheri farming and simultaneous changes of socio-economic condition of people living in Garbhera village of Purba Medinipur District, West Bengal, India
- Man In India
- 104 (3&4), 2024: p.217-231
The present study investigates the nature of the decline in agricultural land and trends of Bheri farming and its impact in Garbhera village under the Bhagwanpur-1 block of Purba Medinipur which is one of the major shrimp-producing districts in West Bengal. It enquiries why agricultural land has been converted to bheri. In this village, now various types of fish such as Ruhi, Catla, Mrigal and different species of shrimps are cultivated in bheri. For this cultivation, the bheri owners lease agricultural lands from the farmers. The farmers lease out the lands for more profit than their paddy cultivation or some other reasons. As a result of this cultivation, the lifestyle and economic conditions of the farmers have changed as well as the environment and health have been affected. As a methodology, this work includes land use and land cover classification done by Landsat series of Satellite images and ARC GIS 10.8 software to show the dynamics of agricultural land and bheri farming in 10 years intervals between 2002-2022 (i.e., 2002, 2012, and 2022) and interviews of farmers have been conducted to find out the reason behind the conversion of agricultural land to bheri farm. According to the data obtained from satellite images, the amount of agricultural land in 2002 was 1.26 square/km and in 2022 it decreased to 0.11 square/km. Similarly, the extent of bheri farming in 2002 was almost zero but in 2022 it increased to 1.11 square/ km. That is, the amount of agricultural land in the total area of this village has decreased by about 6% while the amount of bheri farming has increased by 62.71%. On the other hand, due to Vannamei farming, the amount of agricultural land is decreasing. Farmers are getting involved in some alternate occupations such as human hair workers, migrant labourers, small shop owners etc. - Reproduced