State and Use of Land Resources in Russia: Trends of the Current Decade

Abstract

The paper considers the state of the land fund in the Russian Federation, primarily the reclaimed land fund. It has been established that the negative tendency to reduction in the area of irrigated land that prevailed in previous post-Soviet decades has been overcome. But there is still a significant proportion of unused reclaimed land, for the development of which funds from budgets of various levels and agricultural organizations were previously expended. In fact, irrigation covers less than 30% of land recorded as irrigated. Due to the special conditions of mass privatization of agricultural land in the 1990s, a significant part of it has turned out to be abandoned: according to various estimates, its area is from 30 to 50 mln ha. In general, the trends of the last decade are positive, but the results achieved are assessed as insufficient.