An Integrated Evaluation of Trade-Offs between Environmental Risk Factors and Food Production Using Interactive Multiple Goal Linear Programming – A Case Study of Haryana

Agriculture has major impacts on the environment, especially on land use, soil and water quality, biodiversity and landscapes, which is the growing public concern in developing countries. The challenge is to find ways for agriculture to efficiently and profitably produce sufficient and safe food to meet the growing demand in the country without harming the environment and degrading natural resources. Agricultural policies often provide substantial production-linked support that have boosted farm output, but with mixed results on environmental quality. Despite some progress in the environmental performance of agriculture over the last decade, there is still much room for improvement. Cereal production in the country has no doubt increased during the last three decades by introducing crops with higher yield potential and using high amounts of external production inputs. Over time it has been realised that such external interventions also negatively affect various other properties of the agro-ecosystems (Sinha et al., 1998; Ladha et al., 2000). In some regions, there have been risks of environmental degradation caused by intensive agricultural practices. Yield trends from long-term continuous cropping experiments indicate that even with the best available cultivars and scientific management, cereal yields either have become stagnant or have started to decline (Aggarwal et al., 2000; Dawe et al., 2000; Duxbury et al., 2000). The major reasons for such a response are believed to be the decline in the supply of soil nutrients because of organic matter depletion, deterioration of soil-physical properties because of puddling, increased pest and disease infestation because of continuous mono cropping, depletion of surface water and groundwater deterioration in the quality of irrigation water. Planning for future