Academy says 44% of Russian agricultural lands unused

MOSCOW, Dec 5 (PRIME) – Russia’s unused agricultural lands amounted to 97.2 million hectares in 2016, or 44% of the total agricultural lands, the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration said in a report published late on Monday citing a census of agricultural lands.

“The experts came to a conclusion that the combined area of unused agricultural lands stood at 97.2 million hectares, or at 44%, though a traditional estimate of abandoned agricultural lands amounts to only 40 million hectares,” the report read.

The academy was also unable to find owners and users of another 50 million hectares of agricultural lands, though they have official owners. The census also discovered a large area of lands that were included in the state register as cropland, but are actually idle fields.

“The census discovered that farmers use 43.3 million hectares instead of 28.8 million hectares as the state register says, and individual households officially own 77.3 million hectares of lands, while experts discovered only 14.3 million hectares. It looks like people are unaware of the fact that they have become owners of lands of defunct agricultural companies,” the report read.

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