Wastelands Development - a Case For Prosopis juliflora

N.W.D.B has estimated that India has about 175 m. hectares of Wastelands. Majority of these lands were, once upon a time, productive lands but human race, by its various acts of ommission and commission, has turned these lands into wastelands. By and large, the country is self sufficient in food grain production at present. We are praised for a large scale export of crops like wheat and soya bean. The cultivated half of India is also not in a very good productive shape and unless uncultived half is quickly brought under tree cover, the productivity of cultivated half would be endangered. Time is, therefore, ripe to have some rethinking about the extent of area to be kept under cultivation. Surplus food stocks in the country have given us an opportunity to redefine frontiers of various land uses acccording to it's capability. Our approach now should shift from extent to quality of land under agriculture. The area under Agriculture has remained nearly static, inspite of tremendous pressure of human and cattle population, which indicates that the remaining uncultivated half of India is under such physical conditions that it can not be economically brought under the plough. Thus on one hand, half of the area of the country is lying unutilisad, on the other hand, there are millions of people who are either unemployed or under-employed. Government of India has, therefore, very correctly decided to bring these two massive unutilised or underutilised resources together by its massive afforestation programme initiated through N.W.D.B. While giving a clarian call for launching this massive afforestation programme, the Prime Minister has indicated the preference for the type of trees to be planted under the programme in as much as that trees, should provide fuel and fodder to the Indian masses. Though, broad choice of species is already made for the programme but within this broad framework of policy, it is the site which is going to decide which tree should be planted. Due to various reasons, by and large, only very refractory sites shall be available for planting and hence proper selection of species is going to play a very important role towards the success of the programme. Fortunately for us, we have a wide spectrum of trees to choose from but few trees have stronger claim, over others due to their specific qualities. Though, despised by many, Prosopis juliflora is an excellent tree for this programme for arid and semiarid saline wastelands. It has many unsurpassable qualities like hardiness, wide adaptability to various hostile sites, non-acceptability of its leaves and twigs by cattle as grazing material, profuse seeding followed by heavy browsing of pods by sheep and goat thereby ensuring its easy and self dissemination and propagation, providing excellent fuelwood, charcoal, honey, cattle feed, small timber, nitrogen fixing qualities, resistance to prolonged droughts, capacity of profuse coppicing and to stand to salinity and/or alkalinity etc. which are not possessed in such superabundance by any of it's associates growing in arid and semi-arid tracts of the country. Inspite of its few weaknesses like aggressiveness of weed and tendency to spread to good areas, Prosopis juliflora has a very strong case for its acceptability in the programme specially for arid and semi-arid wastelands.