Agriculture

Land Utilization

The district has a reporting area of 2.65 lacs Hectt as per revenue records out of which 0.45 lacs Hectt is agricultural use, 0.36 lacs Hectt constitutes barren and uncultivable land excluding follow land, 0.12 lacs Hectt accounts for culturable waste, 0.13 lacs Hectt is under misc. trees, 0.10 lacs Hectt forms permanent pastures, 0.01 lacs Hectt is fallow land other than current fallows, 0.14 lacs is the area under current fallows and 0.61 Hectt is net area sown. The total cropped area of the district during 1999-2000 was 1.24 lacs Hectt of which 0.63 lacs hectt represents the area sown more than once.

Land Holding

According tto the agricultural census of 1991-92, the district had 69508 number of land holding of different sizes. Out of these 60.15% were of below one Hectt and only 39.85% were of the sizes of one hectts and above which indicates that large number of land holding are very small.

Cropping pattern

Major crops of the district are Paddy, Maize and Wheat. Wheat and Paddy constitutes the staple food in plain tehsils Viz. Kathua and Hiranagar where as Maize for Hilly Tehsils Basohli and Billawar. Wheat being main crop in whole of the district had covered 50 thousands hectt of area followed by paddy grown over an area of 36 thousand hectt and rest 38 thousand hectts were covered under maize, millets, oil seeds, pulses and vegetable crop during 1999-2000.