Amendments to legislation are prepared in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan with the aim to provide effective usage of agricultural lands

The issue of usage of agricultural lands in the Russian Federation is very important because at present over 40 million ha of lands are not cultivated. The same problem exists in the Republic of Tatarstan, too, where there are over 35,000 ha of such lands. Imperfection of legislation does not allow to make unfair owners, land users and renters of agricultural lands use effectively and rational.

One of the sessions was devoted to this problem within the framework of the Russian agricultural exhibition “Golden autumn 2015” (Moscow) in which specialists of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan participated.

Discussion of the problem devoted to the usage of free lands for agricultural purposes is planned on October 29 2015 within the framework of the roundtable discussion in the Council of Federation of the Russian Federation. Specialists of the Land and Property Relations Department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the Republic of Tatarstan prepared a number of proposals for amendments to the federal legislation concerning making unfair owners, land users and renters of agricultural lands use the latter effectively, where the key proposals are:

- reduction of the time for taking out of land plots, which will enable to use them for agricultural purposes with minimum exhaustion of soil and will reduce costs for resoiling;

- recording free lands in the state cadastral register with the aim to inform next land users about possible administrative punishment for not using lands;

- acceptance of special conditions for purchasing of agricultural lands for those who have professional education in this sphere and special skills, possess agricultural machinery and equipment, live or have production on the territory, which will enable to exclude the cases of re-selling of unused lands for commercial purposes.