Description
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Land evaluation is the process of estimating the potential of land for alternative
kinds of use (Dent and Young, 1981).Land evaluation is a systematic process of
identifying and measuring land qualities and assessing them for various kinds of
uses. These uses include i) arable farming, ii) livestock production, iii) forestry,
iv) catchment protection, v) recreation, vi) tourism, vii) wild life conservation,
etcetera In the agricultural context, it is the assessment of land for a specific
kind of land utilization, e.g. grazing, rain fed farming, irrigation agriculture
(FAO, 1976). Land evaluation methods aim at assessing land qualities or
suitability for specific land use, as conditioned by biophysical parameters
(Smith et al., 1994). Agricultural land use, unlike other uses, is discriminatory.
It is a fact that not all soils can be used for agricultural purpose and not
all crops can be successfully grown on a particular soil type. It is often
found that a soil type suitable for a particular crop may not be suitable for
another crop because crops are different in their requirements in terms of
nutrients composition and physical quality. Also, these entire requirements
must be understood within the context of limitations imposed by land forms and
other features which do not form a part of the soil but may have a significant
influence on use that can be made of the soil (FAO, 1978).