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@article{208665,
        author = {Sukumar Radrapu},
        title = {Physical Cropland Requirements for Nutritional Replacement of Animal-Source Foods in India: A Production-Based Six-Crop Assessment Using Primary Product Allocation},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {4},
        pages = {2368-2374},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=208665},
        abstract = {Agricultural land comparisons between animal-source foods and plant foods can produce substantially different results depending on the functional unit, system boundary, treatment of co-products, yield basis, and distinction between annual cropped activity and physical land. This study evaluates the agricultural production requirement for replacing the nutritional contribution represented by India's 2024–25 production of milk, eggs, meat, and fish/seafood with a defined six-crop whole-plant production system. The analysis begins with observed production rather than a newly prescribed population diet. The study baseline represents approximately 247.87 million tonnes of milk, 149.11 billion eggs, 10.50 million tonnes of meat, and 19.775 million tonnes of fish/seafood, corresponding to 16.1276569 million tonnes (MMT) of apparent protein per year. A working mixed-diet DIAAS calculation yields a protein-equivalent target of 15.865717567 MMT/year. Replacement production is restricted to soybean, groundnut, chickpea, pigeon pea, green gram, and black gram and is evaluated through five predefined crop portfolios. The model propagates nutritional demand through usable crop output, post-production losses, crop yields, Gross Cropped Area (GCA), and physical-land conversion using India's provisional 2022–23 cropping intensity of 155.85%.
For the Indian Mix scenario, the current propagated model reports 186.787559 Mha/year of GCA and 119.850856 Mha of physical land before the conditional fodder-land offset. Applying the study's single 6.386 Mha conditional offset produces 113.464856 Mha of residual physical land, approximately 28.037776 crore acres. At the study-defined 180% cropping-intensity sensitivity, the corresponding residual is 97.384866 Mha, or 24.064324 crore acres. The five crop portfolios demonstrate material trade-offs among land, water, nutrient, electricity, and greenhouse-gas requirements. The study does not interpret modeled land requirement as land acquisition, does not rank dietary systems, and does not establish universal nutritional adequacy. Its principal methodological contribution is the explicit use of Primary Product Allocation (PPA) to distinguish agricultural production purpose from downstream use of crop co-products. Results should be interpreted as scenario outputs under defined system conditions, with formal nutritional validation and regional agronomic analysis identified as priorities for further research.},
        keywords = {animal-source foods; cropland; nutritional equivalence; DIAAS; Primary Product Allocation; cropping intensity; India; agricultural systems},
        month = {September},
        }