Increasing the efficiency of investments on survey of abundant land for their return to agricultural us

The "“State program for the effective involvement of abundant agricultural land in the use and the development of the reclamation complex of the Russian Federation” for 2021–2030" assumes the return of 12 million hectares out of 44 million hectares of all abandoned agricultural land (AAL) in the Russian Federation. The costs of 12 million hectares survey can be considered productive, while the costs of surveying the remaining 32 million hectares should be considered unproductive. The application of the new geoinformation database of “Soils of agricultural lands of the Russian Federation” (DB SALRU) developed by the Federal Research Centre “V.V Dokuchaev Soil Sience Institute” allows reduction of unproductive costs. By the example of the Vladimir region, a typical Russian region with AAL, the option of ranking AAL by their quality was demonstrated to determine the order of their return to agricultural use. The soil quality criteria are the bonitet and the normative yield of grain crops, which are part of the DB SALRU. It is proposed to consider the expenditures on the survey of AAL for the soils, which are first to be returned to agricultural use, as productive costs. These soils occupy 25% of the AAL of the region. The best quality soils are characterized by more than 40 points of bonitet and the standard yield of grain crops of more than 20 centners/ha. The cost of surveying the lands of the first order of returning to agricultural use is 10 million 80 thousand rubles. Survey of AAL soils of II–IV orders of involvement in agricultural use, with relatively poor quality compared to the soils of the first order, is proposed to be conducted in the case of expansion of the State program in the future. This would save the unproductive expenses for the survey of AAL for the Vladimir region by 30 million 165.5 thousand rubles. The application of the proposed GIS-approach makes it possible to reduce unproductive expenses for the survey of AAL in the Russian Federation nearly by 5.600 million rubles.