Land Degradation

The land and soil face many difficulties like deforestation, erosion, flooding, water logging, urbanization and salination. Around 33 percent of the land is going to be wasted at the end of this century. Soil Erosion is more common in the Australia, India, Spain, U.S.A and Africa. The air and water erosion affects around 40 thousand hectares of land in a year. The top soil lost is the maximum. It makes around 20 percent of the total loss. Our country has the largest livestock and it leads to more of grazing. It leads to the soil erosion. The erosion is prevented by the crop rotation, mulching which leads to decrease in the evaporation and increase in the absorption, presence of suitable outlet channels which can carry the water, sowing of certain crops which check the erosion and include the grasses, groundnut, pulses and berseem. 
The planting of tress also checks the erosion. The control on grazing and the terracing of lands which decrease the speed of water also keeps a check on the erosion. The contour bunding has an ability to hold the rain water and control erosion. The burn agriculture along with the slash is quite common in the tribal areas. It occurs in the tropical and subtropical areas of Africa and Asia. The tress is cut and is burnt and the crops are raised on the ash formed. This phenomenon is known as jhuming and it occurs in the jhum forests in the north east India. The process is not useful as the jhuming is done frequently. The water jhuming is done in less than a decade and it destroys the forest and lead to soil erosion. 
Soil erosion affects farming in detrimental ways. Physical damage is the most visible form of soil loss, and most likely to be remedied. Gravity pulls constantly at soil, nudging it down hill, causing soil slips, earth clips, cracks, creep and slumps. Ironically, the most damaging of rainfall is the impact with which water droplets hit the soil. From there on, the flow of water causes sheet-wash, rilling, surface gullying, tunneling and in rivers it scours banks. In dry climates, wind blow is the main cause of erosion. Soil Conservation is a set of methods and procedures which are adopted for prevention of soil being eroded from the earth’s surface or becoming chemically altered by overuse or salinization or acidification. The main methodology of soil conservation are improvement of the choice of vegetative cover, soil erosion prevention, salinity management, to augment the health of beneficial soil organisms and stopping of soil contamination. Soil conservation if of utmost importance for a country like India which is mainly has an agricultural economy. A large part of India’s population depends on the soil for their livelihood and hence soil erosion and the measures of soil conservation taken up to prevent Soil erosion are of key concern for the Indian government.