Garden globe bulging – Newspaper Kommersant No. 221 (7422) dated 11/29/2022
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According to the results of 2022, due to the state program for involving agricultural land in circulation – it is calculated until 2030 – about 400 thousand hectares can be saved through land reclamation and returned to use. As Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko said yesterday, this should allow increasing agricultural production by at least 2 million tons by the end of 2023. Such rates of land involvement in the turnover lag behind the initial planned indicators of the program. Bills aimed at simplifying the withdrawal of unused agricultural land can probably speed up the process.
The government summed up the preliminary results of the first year of the state program for the involvement of agricultural land in circulation. As Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin recalled yesterday at a meeting with his deputies, it provides for the involvement of 13.2 million hectares of agricultural land by the end of 2030. This year, more than 25 billion rubles have been allocated from the budget for these purposes, and in 2023, another 38 billion rubles. Recall that the authorities have been working on solving the problem of unused agricultural land, the total area of which in 2021 was estimated at 19.4 million hectares, or 5% of the agricultural land fund in the country, explaining this by the need to further increase the volume of agricultural production in order to fulfill the doctrine of food security and export of agricultural products.
At the moment, said Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko, within the framework of the state program, 79 thousand hectares of unused, as well as 15 thousand hectares of abandoned land are involved in the turnover. In addition to this, other plots of about 81 thousand hectares are ready for transfer to farmers. Also, she added, due to reclamation measures, 35 thousand hectares were prevented from leaving the agricultural fund for natural reasons, more than 209 thousand hectares were protected from flooding. According to Ms. Abramchenko’s estimates, “by the end of the year, about 400 thousand hectares of land will be saved or returned to circulation due to reclamation measures. This will increase agricultural production by at least 2 million tons by the end of 2023.”
According to the All-Russian Institute of Agrarian Problems and Informatics, over the past five years, the area of unused agricultural land has decreased by more than 3 million hectares. It should be noted that now the state program does not provide for a breakdown of targets by year, however, based on the fact that the initially approved version of the document planned to involve about 1.2 million hectares per year (see Kommersant dated May 17, 2021), while the rate of return agricultural land in turnover can hardly be considered high.
A block of bills aimed at stimulating the proper use of farmland and simplifying the process of withdrawing abandoned lands is intended to speed up the process. The necessary regulatory framework, as follows from the words of Victoria Abramchenko, is practically formed. Thus, before the end of the year, a bill is expected to be adopted simplifying the procedure for transferring unclaimed shares of agricultural land to the ownership of municipalities (we are talking about about 15 million hectares; see Kommersant of September 16) – the document has so far passed the first reading in the State Duma – as well as a bill on a ban on the sale of agricultural land used with violations in order to close the loophole to avoid their forced withdrawal (pending consideration in the Federation Council). Laws have already been adopted on the possibility, from 2023, of obtaining agricultural land for rent without bidding by peasant farms for up to five years, as well as on the creation of their digital register.
It should be noted that as part of the digital inventory of agricultural lands, the Ministry of Agriculture, within the framework of the state program, plans to create a federal map of such lands by 2025. So far, its fragments have been formed in six regions (Tatarstan, Mordovia, Udmurtia, Belgorod, Moscow and Kaliningrad regions), as a result of which information has been obtained with border contours in relation to 12 million hectares. According to Victoria Abramchenko, this made it possible to identify 2 thousand hectares of agricultural land, information about which was not available in the USRN. “That is why many municipalities were not happy with the proposed digitalization: not everyone wants to part with gray schemes for the use of agricultural land,” she explained. Next year, digital maps should cover 13 more regions.
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