Is Soil Bonitet an Adequate Indicator for Agricultural Land Appraisal in Ukraine?

Leonid Shumilo,Nataliia Kussul,Mykola Lavreniuk,Sergii Skakun

doi:10.3390/su132112096

Abstract

Agriculture land appraisal analysis is an important component of the land market. This task is especially essential for Ukraine, which plans to lift the moratorium on land transactions and legalize farmland sales in 2021. Most post-Soviet countries adopted the notion of a soil bonitet—a quantitative score representing natural soil fertility. This score is also proposed in Ukraine to perform agricultural land appraisals. However, this is a static parameter and does not account for the dynamics of actual crop production on the agricultural lands. Moreover, the bonitet score is not crop-specific. Therefore, in this study, we use maps of bonitet based on the soil map and natural-agricultural districts of Ukraine and crop yields at the village scale to explore the relationships between bonitet values and actual crop production in Ukraine. We found that land appraisal is not correlated with the actual soil bonitet.

Highlights

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has been experienced major changes in land cover and land use (LCLUC) [1]
Bonitet in Ukrainian law is an important characteristic of the soil quality that measure suitability of soils for growing crops
The agricultural land appraisal technique in Ukraine avoids the usage of important features, which are common for the crop yield assessment, such as agroclimatic conditions or agro-practices

Summary

Introduction

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has been experienced major changes in land cover and land use (LCLUC) [1]. Ukraine [2], (ii) the conversion to double-cropping due to temperature increase [3] and a sharp increase in the production of industrial crops [4], (iii) the continuous practice of burning agricultural fields, and (iv) the preparation of the policy to open the land market [5]. The latter is directed to lift the moratorium on land transactions and legalize farmland sales.

Results

Discussion

Conclusion