Transformation of Agricultural Land for Urbanisation, Infrastructural Development and Question of Future Food Security: Cases from Parts of Hugli District, West Bengal

Developing countries of the world encounter urbanisation and infrastructural development in or around the fertile tracts and the absence of any landuse plan for desired landuse change has led to conversion of farmlands, which is detrimental to future food security and environmental quality. Hugli district is traditionally well known as one of the most prosperous agricultural regions of West Bengal, but the district is experiencing rapid urban extension and infrastructural development towards productive agricultural land since 1991. This has caused decline in the amount of agricultural production, which may be treated as an indicator of increasing threat to the long run sustainable livelihood security of the people of the whole of West Bengal. This article critically explores the transformation of agricultural (farm) land because of growing rate of urbanisation and infrastructural development, which in turn poses the question of threat to food (in) security. Although, this is a growing problem across the universe, this article probes the future food security questions of Hugli district, West Bengal by examining the impact of the highly intertwined indicators of urbanisation and infrastructural development on agricultural (farm) landuse and its effect on food security. Regression Analysis, Spearman’s Ranking Correlation Coefficient, Remote Sensing Technologies, Markov Chain Model, Projection of Future Population Growth, and Yield Rate are employed to understand the depth of the problem. The result not only shows a direct negative correlation between urban extension and agricultural areal contraction but also the supervised classification of satellite imageries shows that there is rapid change of rural landuse from 1996-2016. There is no match between future population growth and future yield rate of crops and the Markov Chain Model further predicts that the cropland will decrease from 62.77% to 42.90% and the built up area will increase from 31.86% to 54.63% of the total area from 2016 to 2056.


Introduction
Urbanisation, as already well established, is the shift from a rural to an urban society and involves an increase in the number of individuals living in urban areas within a specified time (Adesegun et al., 2015;Omer, 2016). It is the result of social, economic and political advancement that lead to urban concentration and emergence of large cities, change in landuse and transformation of pattern of organisation and governance from rustic to metropolitan system (Ekpenyong, 2015:31) through the development of different forms of infrastructure. The term 'infrastructure' is coined by joining 'infra' and 'structure', which means subordinate parts, substructure or establishment of an endeavour (Nayak, 1999: 59). According to the economists of the world, it contains of all those amenities and activities, the basic rationale of which is the sustenance, which they provide to income generation and production (Bajpai, 1995). Infrastructures are the very heart of financial and social advancement. There are two aspects of infrastructure, on one hand, they boost economic growth, address basic needs, offer mobility and social interaction, and on the other hand, they generate environmental pressure (Shilling, 2007: 1). In most cases, infrastructural development cause transformation of agricultural land, thus both urbanisation and infrastructural development can be treated as a growing threat to food security. 'Food security' has been described by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) in its World Food Summit in 1996: "food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life" (FAO, 2008: 1). The organisation has recognised four key dimensions of food securityavailability, stability, safety and access to food. The first measurement is related to the general availability of food in adequate amount. Both production and supply system of food are distinctive in rustic and urban setting. Food stability alludes to the access to food at all times with no danger of losing access as a consequence of sudden stuns, for example economic or climatic crises or cyclical events such as agricultural seasons. Food safety is connected to the quality of food and the final dimension, access to food is related with the assets that people or their families possesses to obtain food necessitated for a healthy living (FAO, 2008:1). Thus for people living in urban zones, access to food is consequent upon the household's ability to purchase food. Each of these four key facets of food security can be studied in the milieu of urban environment. The decadal growth of population of the study area is 10.59%, the decadal growth of urban population is 42.13% and meeting the demand of such a large population will put enormous additional pressure on food production system, because the resources required for its production such as land and water are becoming meagre. The following section discusses literature that underpins this research.

Review of Literature
Ira Matuschke (2009) in the paper titled 'Rapid Urbanisation and Food Security: Using Food Density Maps to Identify Future Food Security Hotspots' explained the challenges of rapid urbanisation in developing countries and the impact of rapid urbanisation on four dimensions of food security such as availability, stability, safety and access to food around the world.
Using GIS, Matuschke (2009) constructed a food density map of the world to identify the future food security hotspots. In a similar way, Huang et al., (2009) used remote sensing, GIS techniques to identify the landuse change in the peri-urban zones of Taipei, and showed how urbanisation is causing landuse change. They also worked out the impact of the landuse changes on the global environmental change. In the paper titled 'Urbanisation and Its Impact on Agricultural Lands in Growing Cities in Developing Countries: A Case Study of Tamale in Ghana', Naab et al., (2013) highlights not only the landuse planning response to urbanisation but also explains its influence on food (in)security within the context of urbanisation. It also provides vivid information on how different policies can be taken to meet the crisis of food security. The findings of this research bear similarity to the "losses of agricultural land due to infrastructural development on Rajshahi District of Bangladesh" (Islam and Hassn, 2013). Using Remote Sensing and GIS techniques, Islam and Hassn (2013) found out the losses of agricultural land due to infrastructural development from 1977-2010. In doing so, they not only analysed change detection but also predicted on future availability of agricultural land. David Satterthwaite, Gordon McGranahan and Cecilia Tacoli (2010) seemingly discussed the impact of urbanisation on food production and on climate change. Here, they studied the relations between urban change, food demand and rural urban linkages and introduced the concept of urban agriculture. Urban agriculture or urban farming is an act of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a village, town, or city. Food security, nutrition, and income generation are key motivations for urban agriculture. Earlier in 2002, Acharya et al., studied the impact of urbanisation on sustainable agriculture in Malaysia where they discussed about the changes in economic structure of Malaysia due to urbanisation and its impact on natural resources-urban waste generation, air pollution, water pollution, land conversion and species extinction.
Notwithstanding, food security was previously linked with climate change, nutrition, poverty and several other issues, while infrastructural development was mainly linked to economic development and environment. A real paucity of work is observed regarding the relation of urbanisation, infrastructural development and food security especially in a developing country like India where rapid, haphazard, unplanned urbanisation are causing great loss to farmland. Hence, this study is an attempt to examine the pace at which urbanisation; infrastructural development is consequent upon rapid landuse change and its influence on food security in parts of Hugli district. The findings demonstrate that urbanisation in the study area is consequent upon rapid landuse change, decrease in the land under cultivation, lower yield rate of crops, affecting on the future food security as well as perceptible pressure on the ecological balance of the region as a whole. Objectives of the research and methodology are discussed in the following section.

Objectives and Methodology
The key objectives of the present study are:  to assess the rate of urbanisation in the selected parts of Hugli district,  to examine the extent to which rural landuse is affected by urban extension and infrastructural development,  to probe into the rate of decrease of agricultural land and productivity and  to estimate the future food security of the study area The research is based on both primary and secondary data. In order to understand the role played by the Public Distribution System (PDS) in food security, the primary data has been collected using random sampling method. In order to probe these questions, the research considered some selected blocks of the productive agricultural area of Hugli district as areas under review to probe into urbanisation effective in altering the rural landuse with possible threat to future food security. The urbanized blocks of Hugli district are Serampur-Uttarpara, Chanditala I & II, Jangipara, Balagarh, Panduah, Chinsurah Magra, Singur and Haripal. Amongst these, the Serampur-Uttarpara block is highly urbanised. Here, the urban population is 76.10% and the urban area is 53% and the net sown area is only 653 hectare during 2011. The block also bears a long history of urbanisation dating back to 1951(Serampore was class II town and Uttarpara was class IV town according to 1951 Census). Thus, the block is not considered as productive agricultural area. Except for the Serampur-Uttarpara block, all the other blocks have greater extent of net sown area and all of them are experiencing rapid urbanisation and decrease of cultivated area.  Figure 1).

Computed by the Authors) Urbanisation and its Effect on Agriculture
Urbanisation leads to broad-based rural to urban transformation relating population, landuse, economic activity, culture, or indeed any one of these (McGranahan et al., 2014:6). It involves an increase in the size of urban populace, growth in the number and size of urban places with increasing concentration of population in such places (Hauser et al., 1954;Padam et al., 2001:2-4 andMukherjee et al., 2017). Over recent decades, developing countries show trends of decrease in rural landuse and an increase in urban landuse through urbanisation (Mundia et al., 2006;Jat et al., 2008;Dewan et al., 2009 andYin et al., 2011). Rapid urbanisation is related with the disappearance of rural agricultural land, spatial discontinuity and sustainability challenges (Yeh et al., 1999;Xie et al., 2006 andWei, 2007). Agricultural land is more or less level to slanting, well drained and cleared, not prone to erosion and as of now connected to existing transportation infrastructure. These features make it the lowest cost; therefore, agricultural land loss is substitute to newly urbanised land  Table 1 shows urbanisation and agricultural statistics. Census has defined Census Towns (CTs) as places that fulfil three overlay criteria of populace of 5000, 75 percent of male main working population occupied in nonagricultural pursuits and density of 400 persons per sq. km. They can be effectively characterised as transitional urban areas at various levels of transition, which is also known as urbanisation by implosion, where massive density of population, economic change and access to good level of public services prompts to urban development. They are not governed by urban local governments (Ghosh, 2014: 29;Chakraborty, 2015: 170 andKarmakar, 2015: 22). There is exponential rise of urban population and the number of CTs in all the blocks of the study area. Haripal, Jangipara and Chanditala I had little experience of growth in urban population up to 2001, but in 2011, urban population increased to a considerable height, which in turn signals the pace of urbanisation in the study area as explained below: Balagarh block included two Non-Municipal (NM) towns such as Mirdhanga and Sripur since The trend line in Figure 3 displays fall in net sown area with urbanisation in all the blocks of the study area. Balagarh, Pandua, Haripal, Singur, Chinsurah-Magra and Chanditala II block shows greater fall of net sown area and the rest of the blocks project comparatively lesser decrease of net sown area due to urbanisation (Figure 3). The area under non-agricultural use is found to increase from 2001 to 2011 in all the blocks of the area under review. The blocks-Balagarh, Pandua, Singur, Chinsurah-Magra, Chanditala II shows greater degree of increase of area under non-agricultural landuse than the other blocks of the study area (Figure 4). The above facts prove that the district has experienced a reciprocal loss of net sown area due to substantial gain in the rates of urbanisation. There is also increased use of land into non-agricultural uses such as settlement, building construction, industry, roads, infrastructure, etc. Urbanisation is vital to loss of territory under agriculture. In other words, urbanisation has always been stretched out on agricultural belt (Satterthwaite et al., 2010). Spearman's ranking correlation coefficient can be used as a method to compute the extent of urbanisation as a responsible factor in transforming rural landuse pattern. The result shows that there is a strong inverse relationship between the growth of urban area and the net sown area (Table 2).   Infrastructural development is essential for maintaining economic growth and improving the quality of life by providing better transport and communication system (Shilling, 2007: 5). Urbanisation indicates economic growth and creates immense demand for private and public sector infrastructure advancement (Aldred, 2012). According to Berdi and Cavinato (1982), transport and communication are the most important variables for infrastructural development (Nayak, 1999: 60

Remote Sensing Technologies, Detection of Landuse Change and Prediction of Future Change of Landuse Using Markov Chain Model
Advancement of Remote Sensing technologies facilitates us in detection of landuse/land cover change over a period of time (Seto et al., 2003;Weber et al., 2003 andPellika et al., 2004). They are available and accessible at high temporal resolution and the cost is lower than the other traditional methods of landuse change detection (Jensen, 1983;Martin et al., 1989 andEl-Raey et al., 1995). In the current research, present landuse change and future probability of further landuse change has been worked out to understand the degree to which cropland can be affected by urbanisation and 1 Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), retrieved from, http://pmgsy.nic.in (accessed September 10 2017) infrastructural development. Satellite images-Landsat 5 TM, November 1996 and Landsat 8 OLI, November 2016 (30 metre spatial resolution) have been analysed to detect the landuse change in the area under review. Supervised classification has been done to extract the required information. The result is then matched with Google Earth image of the study area. A post-classification matrix is worked out through change detection to analyse the nature, rate, and location of landuse change (Table 3). Markov Chain Model has been applied to show the probability of changes from each class of landuse to each different class in future. Markov Chain Model, in a general sense is a projection model, which demonstrates the probabilistic movements of an individual in a system consisting of discrete states. Markov Chain recognises both time and a finite set of states as discrete values to forecast the future landuse change. Transitions between the states of the system are traced in the form of a transition matrix that accounts the probability of moving from one state to the next (Clark, 1965;Hegazy et al., 2015). Application of Markov Chain to model change in landuse started since the year 1970 at a variety of spatial scales as a substitute to the use of large-scale urban simulation models for forecasting landuse alteration (Bell et al., 1977;Baker, 1989 andKiran, 2013). Table 4 presents the Probability Transition Matrix of different landuse types of the study area. In this research, 1996 and 2016 landuse maps are prepared to predict the future landuse change during 2056 in the area under review ( Table  5).The result shows that there is a rapid conversion of agricultural land/cropland into settlement and other constructions from 1996 to 2016. In many cases, area under bare land, plantation, and water bodies have been converted to built up area. The cropland has decreased from 99612.43 hectares to 82693.4 hectares and the built up area simultaneously increased from 21026.2 hectares to 41967.7 hectares during 1996-2016 (Figures 7 and 8). All the blocks of the study area shows decrease in agricultural land and increase in area under built up. Pandua, Balagarh, Chinsurah-Magra, Haripal, Singur and Chanditala II blocks show more or less similar rate of decrease of area under cropland and increase of built up area. Jangiapara and Chanditala I block also display same character but the rate of increase of built up area is more than the rate of decrease of cropland ( Figure-9). The Markov Model further predicts that the cropland will decrease from 62.77% to 42.90% and the built up area will increase from 31.86% to 54.63% of the total area from 2016 to 2056. Future projection of landuse again signifies that in future the change of landuse will have detrimental effect on cropland (Table 5).     Rapid economic growth combined with increasing population, reduction in agricultural land and decreasing soil availability for agricultural production are correlated with food security in developing countries like India and China (Yang et al., 2000;Lin et al., 2003;Zhang et al., 2004 andChakraborty et al., 2016). Scientists and agriculturalists have already predicted decrease in crop yields, as there is no such scope for further expansion in the agricultural land (Sajjad et al., 2012 andSayeed, 2014: 5). Greater urban landuse in fertile land has negative impact on soil resources, and on food security. The effect is decline in agricultural productivity, low standard of living, and threat to future food insecurity (Blum, 1997;Belal et al., 2011 andNaab, 2013: 257).

Source: Computed by the Authors
Today our existing knowledge fails to ascertain direct cause-effect relationships between urbanisation and its influence on degradation of soils. Urbanisation has definite adverse impact on soil as it alters the biological, chemical and physical properties of soil and thereby, debase its quality in such a manner (soil pollution by industrial and municipal sewage and polluted surface water through irrigation and flooding events) that it leads to loss of vegetation, poor water infiltration, accumulation of heavy metal, excess water runoff and soil erosion (Chen, 2007: 8;Marcotullio, 2008 andKharel, 2011). Again, urbanisation and population growth creates huge pressure on the existing agricultural production. In order to feed growing numbers of people, there is greater use of fertilisers, pesticides, and insecticides in the field. The use of NPK in soil has an increasing trend in Hugli district as a whole (Figure 10). Indiscriminate use of inorganic fertilisers, pesticides and other sorts of agro-chemicals are detrimental to soil fertility and they are often responsible for soil degradation (Bhattacharyya et al., 2015:3535, Massah, 2016. The use of these fertilisers may provide higher yield at present but it might have a negative effect to natural ecosystem in the long-term. Loss of productive land is the principal cause of inviting threat to food security in the study area. Loss of agricultural land is directly consequent upon reduction in production of principal and non-principal crops. Urbanisation and infrastructural development in the area have affected all four dimensions of food security as explained below:

Food Availability
Food production and supply are the two most important components of food availability.

Population Projection and Projected Yield Rate
Quetelet, a French Mathematician propounded Population Projection in 1835. It helps us to calculate the growth of population based on the present and past conditions. The planners and administrators to gauge economic and social development often use this but this method not only measures population. Here, in this paper geometric method of projection is utilised to understand both the population and yield rate of the study area in near future. The projected population and production is based on present socio-economic and cultural situation. 2 2 Population Projections: Meaning, Types and Importance, retrieved from, http://www.sociologydiscussion.com/demography/popul ation-projections/population-projections-meaning-typesand-importance/3058 (accessed September 18 2017) Projected Population or yield rate =Population of current year or Yield rate of the current year (1+r/100) n r = average annual growth rate of population/ average annual yield rate n= number of year involved in the period of time Following the above formula, Projected Population and Yield rate have been calculated for the area under review. Table 6 shows that the projected yield rate of some major crops has decreased from 2000-01 to 2051-52. Aman, Boro and Potato are some of the major crops of Hugli district. The yield rates of these crops have been taken into consideration. Yield rate of Aman and Boro have decreased in the study area but yield rate of Potato is found to increase in Pandua, Chinsurah-Magra, Singur, Jangipara, Chanditala II. The increasing yield rate of Potato in some of the blocks is a positive sign for the district as a whole but decreasing yield rate of Aman and Boro as staple foodgrains are a negative impact. This fact raises a fundamental question, whether the district or the state will rely on greater production of potato, precisely because the decreasing yield rate of rice cannot be compensated by greater yield of potato, as rice is the main source of nutrition for the poor.  Food production does not increase at par with the increase in the population, which is evident from Tables 6 and 7. In future, agriculture will be a challenging pursuit to meet the demand of the increased population. The increased number of individual will require more food, which will have to be generated by greater agricultural production or by food imports (Matuschke, 2009: 5). If a prosperous agricultural region experiences decrease of cropland and yield rate of major crops and increase of population in near future, then it would pose an overall negative impact on the district and the state. This fact also signifies that the region may be dependent on food import in long run.
Here, one thing must be mentioned that importing food can be an option for countries like Japan where economic growth takes place in terms of industrialisation and the country is mostly reliant on food import from outside due to trade liberalisation (Tetsuji, 2009). In India the agricultural products imported from outside are cereals, pulses, milk, cashew nuts, fruits, sugar, oilseeds and vegetable oils. India's total expense for cereal and pulse import stands for 196.8 million dollars, which is 10.7% of the total agricultural import of the country in the period of 1999-2000. 3 Thus in case of developing countries like India, food import is not an option. If a region is dependent upon food import precisely due to decreasing food production then a crisis of food grain will generate high demand and low supply of food grains. Thus, food price will rise, the government subsidy in PDS will fall and the worst sufferer would be the poor section who falls below poverty line.

Food Stability
The increased food demand will press upon the transportation and distribution of food materials within the cities. This will put additional pressure on rural infrastructures, transport advancements, and food distribution outlets. Since these are already insufficient in urban areas of many developing countries, the stability of food supply may be jeopardised (FAO, 2008). In developing countries, urban poor are always at risk during extreme weather conditions and other climatic hazards 4 . Similarly, lower food availability in the study area will put threat to the access of food at all times especially during sudden scarcity of food due to natural hazards. When the availability of food will be less, the demand for food will rise and food prices would also rise. Thus, both rural and urban communities will be unable to sustain their livelihood and move to other places in search of work and food (Szabo, 2016: 32-33).

Food Safety, Access of Food and role of Public Distribution System (PDS)
Access to food in urban areas are greatly dependent upon the relations between income and food prices (Atkinson, 1995: 154). Urbanisation indicates greater reliance on food markets.
Thus, poor people become immediately vulnerable to potential price spikes. Urban dwellers buy 90% of their food from outside. Therefore, food prices are a major determinant of whether food products can be acquired or not (Ruel et al., 2003).The PDS plays a vital role in food management operations, especially in developing countries today. The most important food items covered under the PDS in India are rice, wheat, and sugar. These three items together account for greater percentage of the total PDS sales (Sarkar, 2005). In West Bengal, annual income of all households below ₹42,000 or less was provided with the benefits of ration. Rice is provided at ₹ two per kg and flour is provided at ₹ five per 750 gm by the West Bengal PDS. 5 Though the government is providing rice at ₹ two per kg, the production cost of rice is much higher and the government pays huge amount of subsidy for running PDS. If urban growth continues to change the agricultural land and affect food production, then how long the state will be able to provide subsidy in PDS is a matter, which needs attention. Often it is found that the rice available at ration shops lacks adequate quality. During the primary survey, it is found that amongst 200 household surveyed, 73 households do not prefer to consume food from fair price shops because of poor quality of grains. 32 households reported that in spite they fall under poverty line they do not get PDS facilities. The amount of grains provided by PDS is also not sufficient to the rural poor as their nutrition is very dependent on this. Thus, they have to avail food from outside (Data Source: Field Survey, 2016).
The PDS suffers from several criticism like lower quality of food grains, substantial amount of leakage which affects the third measurement of food security that is food safety. Generally, it is found that in urban areas, food is consumed outside the house. In many developing countries, the set-up of street stalls is unregulated. There is deficiency of adequate refrigeration, water, sanitation and other facilities in the food stalls. Vendors are not often trained in preparing, handling, and storing food safely. Therefore, connection between consumption of street foods and the prevalence of gastrointestinal infections have been detected in developing countries (Maxwell et al., 2000;FAO 2008). Ration commodities are provided only to the people having proper residential address. Homeless, beggars and others who do not have appropriate residential address are left out of this programme in most cases. This fact certainly affects the access of food to all individuals, especially those who do not have any food purchasing capacity (Sarkar, 2005). A definite stride would therefore have to be taken by all the three organs of the country, that is, legislature, executive and judiciary at least to see that food reaches the hungry populace (Sirpurkar, 2015). Some other issues associated with PDS are high cost to run the system, the question of urban biasness, regional disparities in PDS benefits, low amount of procurement, problems of focusing on the needy people, high level of food subsidy, minimal cost-benefit ratio and so on (Sarkar, 2005).

Conclusion
The objective of the paper was to find out the relationship between urban expansion and reduction of land under agriculture and its effect on the future food security. It is found that there is profound impact of urbanisation on all dimensions of food security in the study area. The study area has experienced rapid pace of urbanisation and infrastructural development within a span of 10 years from 2001 to 2011. Consequently, the net sown area of the selected blocks has declined and non-agricultural landuse has increased simultaneously. Future projection of landuse change, loss of soil fertility, productivity decrease, and rise of population are some of the facts, which are directly consequent upon the future food security of the area.
An important consequence of urbanisation can be establishment of a new balance with the agricultural processes. This new balance necessitates direct attention to a number of problems that must include both formal and informal planning (Winfield, 1973: 73). Lower yield rate, constant increase of population, contraction of cropland by built up area and infrastructural development are the major problems in the study area. To deal with these problems, modern agricultural system becomes important. Modern agricultural process is solely dependent upon several formal and informal planning in agriculture, which requires access to resources, technology, management, investment, markets and supportive government policies. There must be proper supply of nutrients to maintain soil fertility. Plant growth must be promoted without soil loss by new technologies and machineries. Effective irrigation system along with the use of improved genetics for crops and livestock to enhance yields and use of modern genetic and other techniques to protect plants and livestock from losses to competing plants, diseases, drought insects and other threats are necessary actions to be given attention. There must be a highly productive and efficient system that simultaneously protects the environment by means of sensitive and efficient use of natural resources (Motes, 2010: 13). Moreover, balanced urbanisation is a good sustainable urbanisation example where attainment of sustainable food security is must, which involves issues like conserving land, water, and economic growth through food production (Chambers, 1987;Jain et al., 2010 andLiu et al., 2017). Jain, P. K., Hansra, B., Chakraborty, K. and Kurup, J.M. (2010). Sustainable food security, New Delhi: Mittal Publications (ISBN: 9788183243568) Jat, M.K., Garg, P.K. and Khare, D. (2008). Monitoring and modelling of urban sprawl using remote sensing and GIS techniques, International journal of Applied earth Observation and Geoinformation, 10(1), pp.26-43