Peculiarities of Optimization of the Structure of Cultivated Areas of Agricultural Crops in the Conditions of Transformation of Land Relations

Abstract

Modern global trends in the development of agricultural land use convincingly prove the need to solve, along with the task of providing the population with food, the problems of environmental protection, preservation of biodiversity, reproduction of soil fertility [4,10,24]. That is why such systems of land use are formed, which prioritize not the maximum productivity of crops, but the preservation of functional connections between natural elements of the environment. Adaptive landscape systems of land use fully correspond to such directions, the main principles of which are environmental friendliness, adaptability, scientific capacity and biogenicity [2,6,11,30].Such principles make it possible to move from the concept of total intensification of land resources, the consequence of which is the degradation of the soil cover and the entire surrounding natural environment, to the concept of nature conservation adaptive landscape land use and ecologically balanced agroecosystems [5,7,26].An important step on the way to the formation of adaptive landscape land use systems is the rationalization of the structure of crops, taking into account the geomorphological, soil and economic conditions of specific regions [1,15]. Optimizing the structure of cultivated areas is the main, cheapest and ecological means of increasing the productivity of agroecosystems, ensuring more complete use of the bioclimatic potential of territories [5,12,28].However, radical transformations in the agrarian sphere of our country are mainly caused by market conditions without taking into account the requirements of environmental safety, have led to a significant increase in the share of highly profitable technical crops and a decrease in the area of crops of the fodder group; in particular, perennial grasses, which form the basis of soil-protective crop rotations [4,18]. Scientifically unsubstantiated expansion of the areas of intensive crops, as shown by the practice of the previous period and today, leads to the strengthening of degradation processes: erosion develops on sloping territories, dehumification and depletion of nutrients on plains; since economic entities on the land, in the vast majority, do not have the opportunity to compensate for the nutrients removed from the soil with the harvest of agricultural crops at the expense of organic and mineral fertilizers [1,12,14].The aggravation of these environmental problems today can lead to even greater economic losses and social troubles in the future, related to the food security of the country and the normative state of the natural environment [11,29]. Therefore, in order to ensure highly efficient, ecologically safe use of land resources, it is