The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (2015) 18, 181–193

H O S T E D BY
National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences
The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space
Sciences
www.elsevier.com/locate/ejrs
www.sciencedirect.com

RESEARCH PAPER

Identification of suitable sites for organic farming

using AHP & GIS
Ashutosh Kumar Mishra, Shikhar Deep *, Abhishek Choudhary

School of Environment & Natural Resources, Doon University, Dehradun 248001, India

Received 9 November 2014; revised 10 May 2015; accepted 22 June 2015

Available online 14 July 2015

KEYWORDS Abstract Uttarakhand is covered with 64.76% of its area under Himalayan forest providing the
Organic farming; exquisite biodiversity and differences in climate with a miscellany of flora and fauna. Therefore cre-
AHP; ates great scope for the development of organic farming in rural areas to boost the rural economies.
GIS; But organic farming is not very much evolved in this state due to lack of adequate transportation
Rural tourism; services and other socioeconomic reasons. Remote sensing and GIS can play an important role in
Site suitability the identification of the suitable zones for the development of organic farming in more facile man-
ner. In this paper a methodology is proposed to identify the suitable zones in the state for the devel-
opment of the organic farming using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geospatial
techniques to boost rural economies and promote rural tourism to make self-sustainable villages.
This study represents the efficacy of AHP and weighted overlay model for the site suitability anal-
ysis of organic farming in the study area.
Ó 2015 Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This
is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/
4.0/).

1. Introduction disasters in recent years and due to unemployment, people

from hilly areas are migrating towards the plains.
Uttarakhand is a state known for its biodiversity and climate Environmental impacts due to land cover disturbance and
all over the world and having great potential for the develop- tourism are also main problems in mountain regions (Boori
ment of rural tourism. Management of rural tourism is et al., 2015). Organic farming can play an important role for
necessary for the conservation and protection of natural trea- socio economic development and to make villages self-
sures with economic improvement of the local villagers. sustainable. Degradation of environmental quality and food
Uttarakhand has been facing challenges of different natural safety concerns due to excess use of fertilizers promoted the
organic farming in recent decades (Läpple and Cullinan, 2012).
Organic farming has a great scope in the Uttarakhand
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 7351206000. because of its climatic and environmental conditions.
E-mail address: iirs.deeps@gmail.com (S. Deep). Avoidance of the external inputs such as synthetic fertilizers
Peer review under responsibility of National Authority for Remote and pesticides makes its environmentally friendly. Organic
Sensing and Space Sciences. farming also lowers the nitrogen losses from soil and enhances
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrs.2015.06.005
1110-9823 Ó 2015 Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
182
soil carbon sequestration (Leifeld, 2012). To get maximum
production suitable land, local environmental and geological
conditions are prime necessity. Identification of suitable sites
for organic farming or agriculture requires consideration of
different climatic, topological environment and geophysical
limitations (Kamkar et al., 2014). Therefore accurate and
recent land use/land cover (LULC) and other geophysical
data should be considered for assessing environmental
concerns (Deep and Saklani, 2014). Geospatial tools can be
used for the identification of the suitable lands for the organic
farming on different criteria like soil quality, geology,
drainage, topography of the place. This technique can also
help to identify and prioritize the potential sites for the organic
farming.
Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) is used as a decision
making tool for the identification of suitable organic farming
sites. AHP was developed by Saaty (1980), for setting-up a
hierarchical model based on criteria and alternatives for repre-
senting the complex problems (Roig-Tierno et al., 2013). As a
multicriteria decision-making method, the AHP has been
applied for solving a wide variety of problems that involve
Figure 1 The study area (zone 1).
A.K. Mishra et al.
complex criteria across different levels, where the interaction
among criteria is common (Feizizadeh et al., 2014; Tiwari
et al., 1999).
Weighted overlay along with the AHP gives very promising
result for the site suitability analysis of organic farming. It can
be used to multi-level hierarchical structure on different
criteria and constrains (Triantaphyllou and Mann, 1995;
Boroushaki and Malczewski, 2008). The method has steps to
determine the relative importance of weights on each criteria,
before determining the final score (Bunruamkaew and
Murayam, 2011). AHP is one of the promising methods used
for the agricultural land suitability analysis based on individ-
ual criterions through quantitative analysis (Chen et al.,
2010a; Akinci et al., 2013). Pair wise comparison method is
used to estimate the overall weight of individual criteria or ele-
ment. Integration of AHP and GIS helps in decision support
system by creation of suitability maps.
GIS is used as a decision maker tool for the site suitability
analysis and for developmental activities (Khahro et al., 2014).
Land use suitability mapping and its analysis is one of the most
useful applications of the GIS (Javadian et al., 2011).
Identification of suitable sites for organic farming
Integration of GIS with multi criteria evaluation methods
reveals its extreme applicability in site suitability analysis.
GIS technology is used to formulate different criteria maps
which are used in AHP to construct the site suitability model
for organic farming (Xu et al., 2012).
Almost 78% of state population depending on agriculture
possesses a great scope of organic farming. The implementa-
tion of organic farming in the state will not only boost the
rural economy but also promote the rural tourism and diversi-
fication of farmers and thus prevent the migration of people
from hilly region. The cost of the productivity, net profit and
the total labor cost are key factors in adaptation of new tech-
nologies like organic farming (Thapa and Rattanasuteerakul,
2011). So selection of appropriate land which is having the
maximum productivity, maximum net profit on lesser input
is expected. Since very less area is available for organic farming
in the study area mainly because of natural resources and high
elevation variation. Thus is a strong reason for the applicabil-
ity of this study. The objective of this study is to find the suit-
Figure 2 Schematic representation of the methodology.
183
able areas for the organic farming using AHP and GIS in the
study area.
2. Study area
The study area was chosen on the basis of Uttarakhand
Tourism Development Master Plan 2007–2022. According to
this master plan Uttarakhand is divided into 7 zones. Zone1
was taken as the study area shown in Fig. 1. The area lies
between Latitude 30°110 26.04800 N, Longitude 78°010
47.61500 E and the elevation of study area lies between the ele-
vations of 133 to 2877 m. From the northeast, zone 1 is sepa-
rated by Aglar River and by road connecting to Kalsi, and
from east by Kempty Falls, Mussoorie, Dhanaulti and
Chamba and in the west and south by the state boundaries
of Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh respectively
(Uttarakhand Tourism Development Master Plan 2007–2022,
2008). Study area is also important for the pilgrimage
184 A.K. Mishra et al.

Figure 3 Site suitability model for organic farming.

Table 1 Sub-criteria for organic farming.

Criteria Sub criteria
1 = highest importance 2 = significant importance 3 = average importance 4 = slight importance 5 = lowest importance
Roads <5 km 5–10 km 11–20 km 21–40 km >40
Drainage <5 km 5–10 km 11–20 km 21–40 km >40
Slope 0–5° 5–10° 14–24° 24–34° 34–74°
Soil Younger alluvium Bhabar soil Older alluvium Red and yellow soil Sub-mountainous soil
Geology Alluvium Neo-proterozoic Mid-miocene Pleistocene Pliocene

Table 2 AHP matrix.

Criteria Road Drainage Soil Slope Geology LULC
Road 1.00 0.25 0.25 0.17 0.50 0.17
Drainage 4.00 1.00 6.00 0.33 3.00 0.25
Soil 4.00 0.17 1.00 0.25 3.00 0.25
Slope 6.00 3.00 4.00 1.00 4.00 1.00
Geology 2.00 0.33 0.33 0.25 1.00 0.25
LULC 6.00 4.00 4.00 1.00 4.00 1.00
Weight 0.04 0.19 0.09 0.30 0.06 0.33
Scale: 1 – Equal importance, 3 – Moderate importance, 5 – Strong importance, 7 – Very strong importance, 9 – Extreme importance, 2,4,6 and 8
are intermediate values (Garcı́a et al., 2014).
Identification of suitable sites for organic farming 185

for digitization, ERDAS Imagine 2012 for rectification and

Table 3 Random inconsistency indices (RI) for N = 10. ArcGIS 10 for generation of criteria map and suitability model.
N 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
RI 0 0 0.58 0.9 1.12 1.24 1.32 1.41 1.46 1.49
4. Methodology

In this study multi criteria site suitability analysis was done to

and for the existing tourism sites like Dehradun, Mussoorie,
Dhanaulti, Chamba, Rishikesh, Haridwar and Rajaji
National park.
3. Softwares and data used
Boundary map was generated using boundaries form
Uttarakhand tourism master plan 2007–2022, Vol. I. The
softwares used for this study were: Quantum GIS 2.2.0 used
identify appropriate locations for organic farming based on a
group of criteria and constraints. Based on their importance
and significance in the organic farming six different criteria
and constrains were chosen. The selection of different criteria
was based on maximum limitation method that affects the pro-
duct yield of organic farming which includes soil type, geology,
slope, drainage, and availability of roads (Duc, 2006). Weights
for the each criterion were calculated using AHP and after that
weighted overlay was done to generate the suitability map.

Figure 4 Road network of the study area.

186
Figure 5 Drainage network of the study area.
The schematic representation of the methodology is shown in
Fig. 2.
4.1. Generation of criteria maps using GIS
Roads and drainage system maps were generated using
toposheets of Survey of India and open street map data.
Soil and geology maps were generated using Geological
Survey of India map and NATMO geological map. Slope and
aspect were derived using ASTER data of 30 m resolution.
LULC was generated using Landsat 8 of 15 m spatial
resolution.
A.K. Mishra et al.
4.2. Standardization
All the criteria are in different units so to perform weighted
overlay they need to be in same units and hence needed to
be standardized. Standardization makes the measurement
units uniform, and the scores lose their dimension along with
their measurement unit (Effat and Hassan, 2013).
All the vector layers shown in Fig. 3 were converted to ras-
ter further which were reclassified for the input to the weighted
overlay which finally gave the suitability map. Reclassify tool
in Spatial Analyst of ArcGIS standardizes the values of all cri-
teria for comparison.
Identification of suitable sites for organic farming
Figure 6 Digital elevation map of the study area.
The organic farming requires good soil and geology type
with having availability of drainage system for irrigation,
roads are also important for the easy transportation of the
raw products. While Uttarakhand is a hilly state, slope and ele-
vation also come under the decision making process while
choosing suitable land for organic farming. For suitable site
selection all these criteria were taken into account during anal-
ysis. All criteria were reclassified in five different classes. The
sub criteria were categorized on the scale of 1–5, 1 having
the highest importance and 5 having the lowest importance
shown in Table 1.
187
4.3. Determination of weights using AHP
AHP is used for a group of criteria, sub-criteria to set up the
hierarchical structure by selecting the weightage of individual
criterion in whole decision making process. The weights reflect
the relative importance of each criterion and hence to be
selected carefully. AHP can be applied to make pairwise com-
parisons between the criteria and thus reduces the complexity
(Saaty, 1977). It derives the weights by comparing pairwise the
relative importance of criteria, taken two at a time. Through a
pairwise comparison matrix, the AHP calculates the weighting
188
Figure 7 Slope map of the study area.
for each criterion by taking the eigenvector corresponding
to the largest eigenvalue of the matrix, and then normaliz-
ing the sum of the components to unity (Feizizadeh et al.,
2014).
Using the AHP discussed above the pairwise comparison
matrix was generated by using scale of 1–9 in which 1 having
equal importance and 9 having extreme importance of in
between two criteria shown in Table 2 (Malczewski, 1999;
Saaty, 1980). The matrix generally has the property of
reciprocity, expressed mathematically as:n(n1)/2 comparison
is used for n numbers of elements in pairwise comparison
A.K. Mishra et al.
matrix (Akinci et al., 2013). Once the pairwise matrix is made,
Saaty’s method of eigenvectors/relative weights is calculated.
AHP identifies and takes into account the inconsistencies of
the decision-makers which is its one of the strength (Saaty,
1990; Garcı́a et al., 2014). AHP efficiency criteria are measured
by Consistency Relationship (CR) which is estimated accord-
ing to Eq. (1).
CI
CR ¼ ð1Þ
RI
Identification of suitable sites for organic farming 189

Figure 8 Soil map of the study area.

CR represents a measure of the error made by the decision-
maker or an indicator of the degree of consistency or inconsis-
tency (Chen et al., 2010b). It indicates the likelihood that the
matrix judgments were generated randomly (Saaty, 1977;
Park et al., 2011). The CR depends on the Consistency Index
(CI) and Random Index (RI).
comparison matrix is acceptable and the weight values are
valid. In our case the CR was 0.097 which is under acceptable
limits.
4.4. Generating land suitability model for organic farming

Suitability model was generated using ArcGIS 10 modeler by

kmax  n
CI ¼ ð2Þ combining all criteria maps and overlaying weighs of individ-
n1
ual criteria.
Eq. (2) represents the CI where kmax is the largest
5. Results and discussions
or principal eigenvalue of the matrix, and n is the order of
the matrix. RI is the average of the resulting consistency
index depending on the order of the matrix given by Saaty The transportation of the raw product requires a well con-
(1977) shown in Table 3. If the CR < 0.10 then the pairwise nected network of roads. So the land nearest to the roads
190
Figure 9 Geology map of the study area.
was given more importance and the road map is shown in
Fig. 4. The drainage network is shown in Fig. 5. Digital eleva-
tion map was generated to show the height variation of the
study area shown in Fig. 6. The slope is also an important
parameter in the present study area; the lands having the min-
imum slope were taken as the most suitable and have been
given the highest importance shown in Fig. 7. The soil and
geology type of the area is equally important for the organic
farming. The younger alluvial soil was found to be the most
suitable for the organic farming because it has clay and good
capacity to bound water (Akınci et al., 2013) shown in
Fig. 8. The alluvium is given as the highest importance for
the organic farming because it is most suitable for farming
as it contains clay soil and retains moisture within it shown
A.K. Mishra et al.
in Fig. 9. LULC map was used to determine the available suit-
able land for organic farming shown in Fig. 10.
The final site suitability map generated after weighted over-
lay for organic farming was divided in four classes i.e. most
suitable (1212.77 sq. km), more suitable (434.45 sq. km.), less
suitable (63.89 sq. km.) and not suitable (2816.43 sq. km.).
The study area being rich in natural resources (Reserve
Forests & Water Bodies) and also has huge variation in the ele-
vation shows very less area suitable for the purpose. AHP gives
the most suitable areas which are most adequate with respect
to the parameters considered as shown in Fig. 11. The dark
green patches represent the most suitable area for the organic
farming while dark red patches represent the unsuitable area
for the organic farming.
Identification of suitable sites for organic farming
Figure 10 LULC Map of the study area.
6. Conclusions
The analysis of this study was mainly focused on the identifi-
cation of the highly suitable land for organic farming in the
study area. AHP matrix with integration of GIS is used for
the analysis in which six different criteria were considered.
The AHP with combination of GIS was found very useful
for the suitable site identification. The final result can be
adopted for the decision making process of the organic farm-
ing in the study area, as it gives insight in finding the suitable
areas. The results can be more refined by critically analyzing
191
the techniques used. The study includes the physical parame-
ters only and need to incorporate the social and economic
parameters. Since in AHP, the pairwise comparison is based
on expert opinions which are subjective. Any wrong judgment
on the any criteria can be easily conveyed to the weight assign-
ment (Kritikos and Davies, 2011). This is the main drawback
of the AHP technique (Nefeslioglu et al., 2013) and hence
weights need to be assigned carefully. For more accurate and
beneficial results the study needs to be focused on some specific
species like medicinal plants, which have great economic value
and covers scope of development of rural tourism too. The use
192
Figure 11 Suitability map for the organic farming in the study area.
of high resolution satellite data will aid in analyzing more finer
areas. The identified zones have to be verified on ground level
with other local parameters before the final implementation.
The study can be adopted for rest of zones and also incorpo-
rating other domains of ecotourism than organic farming,
which can flourish in that area.
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