Economic assessment and state cadastral registration of agricultural land

Today in Russia, the attitude toward land as a resource and a means of production is changing. Previously, it was not valued, although there was a need for such assessment. As a consequence, land was not involved in commodity circulation, was not included in the value of fixed assets, and forms of paid land use had not been developed. Being the main and irreplaceable means of production in agriculture, land was not classified as fixed assets in monetary terms.

An important step in land accounting and assessment was the introduction of the state cadastral registration of land plots. This includes information on the location, intended use, and legal status of lands of the Russian Federation, as well as information on territorial zones and the presence of objects located on land plots and firmly connected to them. As a result of cadastral registration, each land plot receives a cadastral number and characteristics that allow it to be uniquely distinguished from other land plots and to carry out its qualitative and economic assessment.

Article 4 of the Federal Law of the Russian Federation "On the State Land Cadastre" lists the goals of its creation and maintenance:

• state and municipal management of land resources;
• state control over the use and protection of land;
• measures aimed at the preservation and improvement of soil fertility;
• state registration of rights to real estate and transactions with it;
• land management;
• economic assessment of land and accounting for land value as part of natural resources;
• establishment of justified land fees;
• justification of placement, specialization, and farming systems by zones and regions;
• other activities related to the possession, use, and disposal of a land plot.

Monitoring is a system of continuous observation of the state of the land fund. The main tasks of monitoring consist of controlling land use and preventing and eliminating negative impacts on the land.

Land assessment is a mandatory condition for the activity of an agricultural enterprise. It includes:

• soil rating — a qualitative assessment of land as a natural body;
• economic assessment — an assessment of land as a means of production in agriculture and as an object of land relations, where the consumer value of land is assessed, as well as its ability to produce a certain amount of products under specific conditions.

The basis for conducting an economic assessment of land is soil rating, during which its physical and chemical properties are comprehensively studied: mechanical composition, humus content, thickness of the humus horizon, acidity, etc. Soil rating is carried out according to a 100-point system, and 100 points are awarded to soil with the best conditions for the leading crop of a specific group of crops:

An averaged assessment across fields, taking into account quality indicators, allows judging the quality of soils for the entire agricultural enterprise. Based on the yield of the leading crop, one can determine the soil quality score (SQS) as the ratio of actual yield (AY) to maximum yield (MY), taken as 100 points:

Based on the results of soil rating, land assessment is carried out taking into account differences in soil quality and economic production conditions. During the economic assessment of land, the influence of soil quality on the most important economic indicators is manifested, including the influence of yield on gross output. Currently, yield, gross output, and net income are most often used as criteria for economic assessment of land; that is, the assessment involves taking into account product output and costs, while net income is the difference between them. There are two aspects of land assessment: 1) general economic assessment of land as a means of production; 2) specific economic assessment of land based on the efficiency of cultivating agricultural crops. Economic assessment of land is calculated in relative points B as the ratio of gross output (GO) or net income (NI) obtained per unit of assessed area to the GO or NI per unit of area of the best reference lands (GO_ref or NI_ref), multiplied by 100:

The complexity of using NI as a criterion for economic assessment of land is due to the fact that it is influenced by more factors than gross output (GO), and it is difficult to isolate, for example, the price level of resources.

Paid land use, which has been in effect in the Russian Federation for almost 20 years, is linked to the economic assessment of land.

Forms of paid land use are: ◊ rent — a portion of the land tenant's revenue fixed in advance in the contract, which is set as an absolute amount and transferred to the landlord at specific times; ◊ land tax — a fixed, stable payment to the budget per unit of land area. It does not depend on the results of the producer's economic activity on the land during the year.

However, land tax as a type of land relations concerning paid land use requires improvement. The amount of land tax is too insignificant to be used for improving soil fertility and increasing production efficiency. Subjects of the Russian Federation independently establish the amount of land tax. Some farms, lacking funds, practice paying it with agricultural produce.

Land use structure: distribution of agricultural land

The legal basis for land relations in Russia is defined by the Land Code of the Russian Federation, adopted on September 28, 2001. The distribution of agricultural land among land users shows the actual share of each form of farming in the total land fund. For an agronomist and a manager, this data is important when evaluating the area structure and understanding the trends in their redistribution.

The dynamics of land distribution is influenced by three main factors: the reorganization of agricultural enterprises, the formation of the peasant (farm) sector, and the expansion of areas for collective gardens and vegetable plots. During these transformations, the modern structure of agricultural land ownership was formed, where the key land mass is concentrated in enterprises of new organizational forms and farms.

• Share of new agricultural enterprises — more than 60% of agricultural land
• Share of peasant (farm) holdings (KFH) — about 10% of agricultural land