Agri-Environmental Sustainability of Indian Agriculture: A State Level Analysis

Improving economic viability of Indian agriculture is contingent upon agri-environmental sustainability (AES). Objective assessment of environmental costs of agriculture is lacking in India. Unless internalise environmental impacts of agriculture will be borne by the society at large, in terms of depletion and degradation of water resources, land degradation and emissions of greenhouse gases, etc. To assess AES of Indian agriculture, the present article builds a comprehensive agri-environmental sustainability index (AESI) based on 40 agri-environmental indicators. The study captures both spatial and temporal aspects of AES by covering 17 major Indian states over 24 years (1990–1991 to 2013–2014). The estimated AESI scores are validated with outcome indicators (e.g., groundwater depletion, depletion of soil nutrients). The results show that states having higher score in Sustainable Irrigation Index are facing lower fall in groundwater level and there are negative correlations across sub-indices of AESI and macronutrient deficiencies in soil. An inverse relationship between AESI scores and agricultural intensity (as measured by average productivity of foodgrains in kilograms per hectare) is also observed. The study comes out with policy suggestions which could help to attain AES of Indian agriculture.