ASSESSMENT OF STEPPE FARM LANDS PLOUGHABILITY TAKING INTO ACCOUNT POTENTIAL SOIL FERTILITY
The modern agroecological, social and economic problems of steppe land use are highlighted in the article. The necessity of ecological and economic optimization of agrarian land utilization in the steppe zone is shown. The integral indices of ecological and economical optimization of the land reserves structure have been developed. The equations for determining the economic threshold of ploughability based on the comparative evaluation with standard farm lands, the classical southern chernozems being taken as the standard ones for the Orenburg region, are deduced. The mechanism of potential soil fertility converting into nominal monetary value terms, which makes it possible to determine the threshold of economic ploughability of steppe soils, as dependent on macroeconomic indices, is suggested. The range of conditionally ploughable lands has been determined.