International Journal of Agriculture Sciences ISSN: 0975-3710&E-ISSN: 0975-9107, Volume 8, Issue 52, 2016 || Bioinfo Publications || 2591 Research Article IMPACT OF URBANIZATION ON PERI-URBAN FARMLANDS OF FARMERS IN THE BENGALURU METROPOLITAN REGION, INDIA RAVI K.N. 1 *, PONNUSAMY K. 2 , KALE RAJIV BALIRAM 3 AND MANDAL PANKAJ KUMAR 4 1,4 Department of Extension Education, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India, 221005 2 Dairy Extension Division, ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, Haryana, India, 132001 3 Agricultural Technology Application Research Institute, Zone-VI, CAZRI, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, 342001 *Corresponding Author: Email-raviknswamy01@gmail.com Received: July 24, 2016; Revised: September 14, 2016; Accepted: September 15, 2016; Published: October 30, 2016 Citation: Ravi K.N., et al., (2016) Impact of Urbanization on Peri-Urban Farmlands of Farmers in the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region, India. International Journal of Agriculture Sciences, ISSN: 0975-3710 & E-ISSN: 0975-9107, Volume 8, Issue 52, pp.-2591-2594. Copyright: Copyright©2016 Ravi K.N. et al., This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credit ed. Academic Editor / Reviewer: Dr Deepak Kumar Kashyap Introduction The pressure on farm land for infrastructure development in peri-urban areas has been mounting up at an alarming rate. Population growth, urbanization and industrialization are major contributory factors to it. India occupies 2.4 per cent of the total land area of the world, but supports 16.7 per cent of the world population [1,2]. Further, the land available for cultivation was decreasing from year to year in India. In last decade alone, 2.76 million hectares of land was converted for non- agriculture use in India [2]. Land has always been a major source for generating agricultural based livelihoods in rural India. However, land is now increasingly required for industry, residential and commercial purposes which promotes real estate booming around the fringes of urban areas. Such non-agricultural demand for land has skyrocketed in the post-liberalization period especially after 2005 as the Indian economy surpassed 8% growth rate and a liberalized real estate sector experienced a spectacular boom [3,4]. This will not only put pressure on agriculture land for non agriculture use in the peri-urban areas but also lure the people to sell their land by the different real estate agencies. In this process, people lost their farmland, their source of food and fodder and all the improvements that had been built up through the generations [2]. But, the question is whether the lands purchased by private parties were utilised for the purpose for which they were purchased or they are keeping the land as not yet constructed plots in order to make huge profit after purchasing it from the farmers with low price. A study by the [4] on land transactions revealed that even before the special economic zones (SEZ) was officially announced, real estate companies flooded into area to buy up cheap land that would appreciate many times over after the SEZ. A huge demand for rights to the not-yet-constructed compensation plots emerged quickly in peri-urban areas. Simultaneously, the situation is common in the fringes of metropolitan cities like Bengaluru. The city growth is touching the rural borders, which are considered as peri-urban areas, which have led to several distortions producing adverse impact on the agriculture in the peri- urban area of Bengaluru [5]. Also, it had twin effect on both farming and farmers in the adjoining peri-urban areas. First, splitting of precious farmland into sites leads to loss of agriculture production and; second, farmers who are lured to sell their land become landless/marginalized once the money obtained from the land sale is not effectively utilized. So, the ultimate effect is on livelihoods of farmers. Hence, this study is an attempt to understand the detailed farmland transactions made by the peri-urban farmers of Bengaluru metropolitan region. Possible efforts was made to know the extent of farm land loss, understand the reasons for the farm land sale, money utilisation by the farmers after the sale of farm land and their future response on selling their farmlands was discussed in detail. The findings from the present study would sensitise the policy makers to understand the extent of peri-urban farmland loss, reasons behind it and recommendations includes possible solutions and mechanism has to adopt to overcome farmland loss in peri-urban areas. Materialsand Methods Description of study area The study was conducted in peri-urban area of Bengaluru a . Bengaluru is the capital city of the Karnataka state (India). Bangalore is one of the fastest growing International Journal of Agriculture Sciences ISSN: 0975-3710&E-ISSN: 0975-9107, Volume 8, Issue 52, 2016, pp.-2591-2594. Available online at http://www.bioinfopublication.org/jouarchive.php?opt=&jouid=BPJ0000217 Abstract- Land is a key asset for farmers in the countries like India where more than half of the population engaged in agriculture for their livelihood. But, Land acquisition from governments; increase in real estate growth by various private business firms and the continued demand for infrastructure development in the periphery of the urban areas makes a greater impact on peri-urban farmland and their livelihoods. So, the present study was an effort to find the overview of farmland transactions by farmers in peri-urban area of Bengaluru, reasons and their future response on selling of land. Study revealed that out of total 160 respondents, about 58.1 per cent of respondents sold their farm land called sold category (n=93), in that 87 partially sold and 6 completely sold respondents were found and 41.9 per cent completely retained their farmland without any sale (unsold category). In sold category (n=93) nearly 71 per cent of the farmers had sold their land to real estate owners. The main reason to sell the land includes escalation in land prices (15.05%), lack of interest of farmers in agriculture (10.75%). Responses about future selling of land revealed that majority of respondents (55.6%) did not show intention to sell land. This shows that farming in the peri-urban areas in the coming days is likely to face many challenges, which require proper attention by government and need to set up a mechanism to regulate the sale of agricultural land around peri-urban areas to prevent further agriculture land loss. Keywords- Bengaluru, Farmland loss, Peri-urban, Urbanization