From 2020, 30% of the costs of farmers for measures to improve soil fertility will be compensated from the state budget. This was announced by the First Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Russia Dzhambulat Khatuov during the forum "Day of the Yaroslavl Field", TASS reports. “By 2020, state support measures in the form of reimbursement of costs to increase soil fertility will begin to work. The costs incurred by the agrarians performing these works will be compensated by 30%, ”Khatuov said.
He clarified that we are talking about soil deoxidation, as well as a number of other types of work. According to him, the Ministry of Agriculture has also prepared a support measure in the form of reimbursement of costs for putting land into agricultural circulation. “70% of the costs will be received by the one who introduces land into circulation,” Khatuov added. He recalled that the domestic agro-industrial complex was tasked with doubling exports, increasing the volume of production for some agricultural crops. “For this it is necessary to deal with soil fertility, to improve the availability of agricultural machinery,” the press service of the Yaroslavl region administration quotes Khatuov as saying.
State support for measures to improve fertility is certainly needed, says Ekaterina Gataulina, a leading researcher at the All-Russian Institute of Agrarian Problems and Informatics. “But a lot will depend on the specific mechanism that will be proposed, and whether there will be any reductions in other already existing measures of state support,” she warns. In particular, it is very important how the effectiveness of the activities will be determined. "Confirmation of an increase in soil fertility is associated with expensive laboratory studies that must be carried out by farmers, which increases the costs of obtaining such state support," she believes.
Currently, a land reclamation program is already operating in Russia, but it is primarily aimed at creating and maintaining systems for irrigating soils or draining them, supporting agroforestry and cultural and technical activities. There is also a mechanism of unrelated support in crop production, which is also linked to an increase in soil fertility, Gataulina lists. “However, a number of regions, the main producers of agricultural products, have recently been deprived of parts of unrelated support. In 2019, these are Belgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk, Tambov and Rostov regions, Krasnodar and Stavropol regions. At the same time, the problem of declining fertility is quite acute everywhere. There are regions with strong soil acidification, while in regions favorable for agriculture, it is primarily about the restoration of lands as a result of their intensive use, about compensation for the removal of mineral fertilizers and humus, ”Gataulina adds.
Of the 198 million hectares of agricultural land in Russia, a significant part is subject to active degradation processes - overgrown with weeds, shrubs, small forests. Wind erosion affects 61 million hectares of farmland, desertification is already more than 100 million hectares, which is confirmed by the formation of the first Russian desert in Kalmykia, says the deputy dean of the Faculty of Soil Science of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov Pavel Krasilnikov. The area of ravines on arable land has exceeded 1 million hectares, and their annual growth reaches 20 thousand km. The share of acidic soils against the background of a sharp decrease in liming volumes increased from 26% to 30% over 45 years. Waterlogging and waterlogging affects 7% of the arable land, another 3% - secondary salinization; in the southern regions, the share of such lands reaches 50%.