Problems of efficient land use in the context of sustainable rural development
The articles are devoted to the evaluation of the current situation in the use of land resources by agricultural producers and to the elaboration of measures aimed to soil fertility preservation. It is defined that the reasonable use of land resources is very important for the economics of the Ukrainian agro-industrial complex, as soil has a number of specific peculiarities which differ it from other production means. Nowadays yields of agricultural crops can be obtained only through the implementation of the complex approach including the enhancing of land resources quality and use control. A negative tendency of soil fertility decrease was defined in present conditions. The complex topsoil ecosystem is destroyed mostly because of the erosion intensive development. The ecological situation of land use in our country has approached to a dangerous margin which separates us from incorrigible ecological processes. One of the reasons of this situation is a significant decrease of organic fertilizers application. For the compensation of humus loses it is necessary to apply every year at least 10 t/ha of organic fertilizers which is impossible because of an important decrease of livestock. This problem can be partly solved by the use of yield part (mainly straw). Also, it is necessary to use devices of high productivity for straw and corn stems cutting and their qualitative applying into soil. The absence of these equipments pushes agricultural producer to burn their co-products. It was defined that measures aimed to soil fertility increase are episodic, that is why in 90-th year the growth of valuable highly productive agricultural holdings has stopped. The decrease of lands fertility and absence of their ameliorative improvement, large scales and intensity of soils degradation conditions annual underperformance of 10-12 million tones of agricultural products in grain equivalent. It was defined that many native agricultural producers didn’t respect main agro-technical measures according to technological cards of agricultural crops growing. Very often sowing areas structure is disturbed, scientifically justified crop rotation is not respected, agro-ameliorative measures are not properly applied. Nowadays the mechanisms for joining economic stimulations measures and legal responsibility in the field of land protection as well as establishment of legally defined nature protection restrictions in lands use by boundary survey are not sufficiently applied for the optimization of lands use and protection. The measures of financing nature protection measures aimed to soil fertility restoration by creation of regional land protection foundations are proposed. This foundation should be created by the allocation of some percent from land tax and fixed agricultural tax. The implementation of ecological tax for land users could be an alternative finances source for nature protection activity aimed to the preservation of land resources. The scale of harm to land could constitute the base of this tax. In this relation the government could : а) implement and to guarantee the execution of soils quality control mechanism when signing land rent agreements; b) finance and develop agro-chemical laboratories for regularly soils condition analyses and monitoring. Nowadays the core rotation norms look like the government intention to correct its previous mistakes with the help of agricultural producers.