Impact of shrimp farming on arable land and rehabilitation of resultant salt-affected soils/integrated soil management for sustainable use of salt-affected soils

The development of agricultural technologies and a better appreciation of the existing but under-utilised knowledge of resource management will be crucial in meeting the ecological needs and in achieving the anticipated food demands of the growing population in the future. The greatest challenge for the coming decades lies in the fact that the production environments are unstable and degrading. Land degradation is proceeding so fast that unless policies and approaches change, many countries will not be able to achieve sustainable agriculture in the foreseeable future. Soil salinization has been identified as a major process of land degradation. The greatest technical causes of decreasing production on many irrigated projects particularly in arid-semi-arid areas, or failure of large areas in rainfed agriculture, are waterlogging, salinization and sodication.