ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF AGRICULTURAL LAND USE REFORM IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The article substantiates the relevance of increasing the efficiency of the use of land resources. An analysis of the structure of cultivated areas of crops over the past 30 years was carried out on the example of the Rivne region. It was established that as a result of the reorientation of Ukrainian producers exclusively on market demand, the high value and export potential of crops, the structure of sown areas has changed significantly. Today, the most highly profitable technical crops are grown – soybeans, rapeseed, corn, sunflower. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of resources, which take into account the global pressure on the natural environment and related to consumption, the scientists proposed the "footprint" indicator. There are already scientific developments regarding ecological, water and carbon footprints. By "land footprint" some scientists understand the amount of land used to produce goods to the country where the products are finally consumed. In our opinion, to characterize the "land footprint" it is worth using not only quantitative, but also qualitative indicators that characterize the change in the ecological and agrochemical state of the land as a result of agricultural production. In recent years, a number of indicators have been proposed in Ukraine for assessing the ecological consequences of agricultural land use, which allow monitoring, control and forecasting of land changes, and identifying crisis situations in agricultural land use. But they were not used to evaluate or measure the «land» footprint. The removal of the main nutrients from the soil (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, humus mineralization) with an average yield from 1 ha, taking into account the structure of the cultivated areas, was calculated. It is proposed to use the calculated indicators to determine the «land footprint» of agricultural land use. It was established that: the existing model of agro-industrial business benefits only large landowners; increases the load on land resources; exhausts them, and leaves a negative «land footprint» from such land use.