Optimization of Landowning and Land Use: Contradictions and Solutions

• Main Author: М. V. Shchuryk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: State Statistics Service of Ukraine, the National Academy of Statistics, Accounting and Audit (NASAA), the National Academy for Public Administration (NAPA) under the President of Ukraine 2015-09-01
• Series: Статистика України
• Subjects: landowning, land use, agro-industrial complex, privatization, land reform, agrarian reform, redistribution of land fund.
• Online Access: https://su-journal.com.ua/index.php/journal/article/view/37

Organization of landowning and land use in the agrarian sector of the Carpathian macroregion (Western Ukraine) is studied in the context of agrarian and land reforms. Critical assessment of the principles of privatizing and sharing the agricultural lands of the former collective and state agricultural farms is given. It is argued that ill-conceived transformation measures launched at the beginning of market economic reforms led to excessive fragmentation of lands, handing over land plots to ineffective owners and users, thus preventing from rise and development of small and medium agricultural enterprises. It is emphasized that the contradictions that the agrarian sector has to face when operating on the existing principles of landowning and land use cannot be overcome. Telling arguments are given to prove that the existing structure of owners and user of agricultural lands in the Carpathian macroregion is incapable to ensure high performance in terms of land use and preservation, improvement and protection of land plots and finding right solutions for ecological and social problems. It is argued that the largest flaw that triggered destructive tendencies in organization of the existing land farms is excessive and populist socialization instead of creating agricultural farms on rational and professional grounds, in conformity with market-based land relations. The flaw originates from mistakes and contradictions between economic and social components of land reform. Because the resources of land owners and users in the Carpathian macroregion, required for rational land use, have largely been at the end, the author proposes to organize inventory, ecological audit and disclosure of the owners’ nomenclature. Their results should lay the basis for a program (guidelines) for optimization of landowning and land use. This document must involve the second redistribution of agricultural lands. This, however, must not apply for the economic entities that have been capable to organize effective land farms, sustain high productivity of land plots and cope with social problems in the rural area. A set of criteria is proposed to measure optimization of landowning and land use, which have been applied in EU countries for a long time. Emphasis is made on the need to introduce territorial differentiation of landowning and land use and abandon general and average measures that are used now by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine for comparisons of the performance by region, oblast, district, agricultural farm etc. Also, land farm optimization should cover agricultural lands of the still unshared part of the land fund. The need to transfer these agricultural lands to local public administration bodies, with transference of the ownership and management functions, is substantiated. Also, the proposition to optimize agricultural lands by abandoning monoculture practices and putting limitations on the size of land plots managed by agricultural holdings is made.