Off-Season Agriculture Encroachment in the Uplands of Northern Pakistan: Need for Sustainable Land Management

Agriculture encroachment over alpine pastoral land is posing serious threats to the sustainable use of natural resources and agro-pastoral systems in the upland environment. This study aimed to understand the scenario of agriculture encroachment within a sustainable land management context in Northern Pakistan's uplands (Buhrawai). Both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches were used for the primary data collection on the pattern of cropland expansion, cropland productivity, agrochemical inputs, and perceived socio-ecological system. The results showed that off-season agriculture has emerged as a cash-earning livelihood activity, largely adopted by decade-old and influential tenant communities in the study areas. During the last few decades, this off-season agriculture regularly expanded from lower- to higher-elevation (2980-3800 m) areas, and extensively encroached on accessible pastoral areas in the bottomlands. Cultivation of the two major vegetable crops, i.e., peas and potatoes, occurred on a total of 417.4 ha of pastoral land, where pea cultivation predominantly occurred on 367.2 ha and potato cultivation on 50.2 ha of pastoral land. We found that repeated cultivation of the same crops, without crop rotation and land management practices, significantly reduced land productivity with time; the crop productivity was recorded to be the highest in the virgin cultivated land (pea: 1.8 tons/ha and potato: 14.8 tons/ha) and the lowest in the old-cultivated land (pea: 0.6 tons/ha and potato: 8.2 tons/ha). As a result of this trend, farmers are abandoning unproductive agricultural land and subsequently starting cultivation in other marginal areas, even cultivating crops on steeper slopes beyond the permissible level (16 degrees). These findings revealed that farmers have extensively used key pastoral areas for cultivation, and they have deprived landless pastoralists of their traditional grazing land in the uplands. Furthermore, this agriculture encroachment imposed serious pressure on the pastoralists' livelihoods and the upland ecosystem on which they rely. Therefore, policies and regulations that promote sustainable land management are much needed to ensure socio-economic equity and ecological integrity in the uplands of Northern Pakistan.