Declaration data of farming land and crop are analyzed in the article. Ukmergė district is chosen for the more detailed analysis. Statistical data of farmers and other land users are analyzed in the article; the declaration data of farming land and crop are analyzed and mathematical statistical dependence between the declared area and soil productivity index is determined. The results show that there are 2,506 registered farms in Ukmergė district and they manage the area of 18,430.07 hectares. The average parcel size amount to 7.35 ha. The number of farming persons in Ukmergė district as well as in Lithuania have considerably decreased during 7 years period. In 2014, the number of farming persons was by 38.12 percent smaller in Ukmergė district and by 41.24 percent in the whole territory of Lithuania compared to 2007. The comparison of the declaration data of 2011 with the data of 2014 shows that the declared area of farming land and crop in Ukmergė district has increased by 2.46 percent although the number of received applications has decreased by 22.2 percent. During the period of 2011– 2014 the majority of assessed applications were received in 2013, i.e., 99.04 percent of all applications received that year. It shows that the size of land parcels has increased. Cereal crops (oat, wheat, triticale, barley, rye, buckwheat and corn) composed the major part of the declared areas in Ukmergė district in 2013-2014 (48.84 percent of all declared crops in 2013 and 53.79 percent in 2014). The analysed agricultural holding “Egvila” during 2011–2014 period declared the area of approximately 272 hectares annually. This company grows white clover for seed, timothy for seed and cumin. Direct payments are received for all land areas. The analysis shows that farmers generally declared their own land. The analysis of the declared land distribution in Ukmergė district by land property right shows that 75 percent of the declared land are private and the remaining 25 percent are leased either from the state or from natural persons.

The search of effective methods of agricultural land protection from soil erosion under conditions of land relations’ reform in Ukraine is a complex ecological and economic issue requiring a system approach to its solution, adequate organizational and economic support and scientific argumentation. The topicality of the research is based on the importance of the problem of arable land protection from soil erosion, and its solution is related to ecologically safe land utilization keeping to the principles of balanced development of land management. The aim of the research is to develop scientific basis for the recommendations how to improve the system of erosion-safe agricultural land management under conditions of reforming land relations in Ukraine. The article presents scientific fundamentals of organization of erosion-safe land management in the context of the balanced development of nature management, analyses conditions of utilization and protection of land in erosion-unsafe landscapes; develop scientifically grounded recommendations as to improvement of a system of erosion-safe agricultural land management at a local level. In the process of the investigation a combination of methods were used: monographic, induction and deduction methods, system analysis, cartographic, experimental projecting. A contour organization of the territory is recommended to apply to protect arable land from soil erosion. Reimbursement of money payments and tax privileges can motivate landowners and land users to introduce anti-erosion measures. It is required to consider use value and non-use value of land resources in the process of their estimation for land payments.

The article presents the Lithuanian forest land change in the period of more than a hundred years. The causes leading to forest land use change are analysed in the article. The beginning of forestry in Lithuania can be traced back to Sigismund Augustus times starting from 1557, when Wallach reform was launched. However, over time forest land and its use evolved for a variety of political, social and economic factors. In 1795 the state-owned forests in Lithuania amounted to 35% of the total area of forests; other forests were owned by landlords, churches and kulak farms. Later forests were cut down quite rapidly, many of them burned down, but reforestation work was insignificant. The smallest forest coverage during the analysed period was in 1945, just 16.5%. Forests were thinned out, wastelands and waterlogged areas dominated. Later, albeit with different variations, the forest coverage of Lithuania increased and today forest area accounts for more than 34% of the total area of the country, the majority of which are private forests. More detailed characteristics of forest land use and user trends as well as their causes are presented in the article. It also looks at the possible prospects.

The changes in the ownership structure were to be implemented by the Agricultural Property Agency of the State Treasury, which, under the Act of Law of 11 April 2003 on the structuring of agrarian system (i.e. The Journal of Laws of 2012, item 803, as amended), on 16 July 2003 became the Agricultural Property Agency with eleven local branch offices. For the purposes of this article the monographic method was used for the overview of relevant literature and legal provisions, whereas the statistical analysis was employed in the data of the Central Statistical Office and reports on the activities of the Agricultural Property Agency. Until the end of 2015 the main objective of the Agricultural Property Agency was to restructure and dispose of the assets within the Agricultural Property Stock of the State Treasury. Since its foundation, the Agency expanded the Stock by 4.74 million ha. Over time, the operating conditions for the Agency were in a state of flux – they were being adjusted to the changing socio-economic situation. At the beginning, leasing was the basic form of disposal of the Stock land. After Polish accession to the European Union an increased interest in the acquisition of agricultural property was observed. By the end of 2014, as a result of land sale, free-of-charge land transfers or other transactions, approximately 3.2 million ha were disposed of, i.e. about 70% of the whole land which was taken over. Currently, according to the legal provisions, long-term lease is the basic form of disposal of the Stock land.

The land consolidation project of the parts of Vilkaviškis district municipality, Pilviškiai and Klausučiai elderates, Alksnėnai and Sūdava cadastral area is analysed in the article, the main indicators of the project, the meaning of land consolidation, the need to improve the order of the execution and implementation of these activities are described in the article. The survey was carried out to examine the opinion of the participants of the project regarding the advantages of the proceeding and results of the project as well as some of its drawbacks.

Agricultural land is one of the most valuable natural resources which can be found in Latvia, since agricultural land has long time served as an important resource of economic activity and food production. Efficient use of this valuable resource depends not only on technologies and knowledge at disposal of farmers but also on regulations concerning the real estate market and taxation of the real estate. Recent changes of the real estate market regulation as concerns agricultural land are analysed in this paper to identify a possible influence on the use of agricultural land.

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) services in Latvia nowadays provide not only for a variety of navigation and surveying needs, but also they are used in agricultural production. The time period when satellite navigation systems equipment and services in agricultural businesses appeared in Latvia and were treated as objects of interest and research has passed. GNSS equipment and enabling modules are purchased, installed and used in agricultural equipment extending their capabilities. A growing number of entrepreneurs provide for this service segment. In the publication of 2014, the authors pointed out that a preparatory and investigation phase in using precision farming systems (including GNSS technology related to them) in Latvia has come to an end transforming into massive practical implementation in the process of agricultural business. The analysis of the obtained information confirmed that during the last year further satellite navigation technology usage in agricultural machinery has grown from simple and approximate level usage to high accuracy and stability navigation services. Growth dynamics and its further development forecasted earlier by the authors coincided with the last year’s actual development indicators of a stable and growing demand for global navigation system services for farming machinery and technical solutions for their user segment. The aim of the article is to justify the forecast expressed in the last year’s publication regarding the increase of the use of precision farming systems thus confirming the fact that their application has moved from a research phase to massive practical implementation and operation in agricultural production.

The article describes aspects of maximum application of economic potential of land resources as an economic category for territorial organization of production. The author has analysed indicators of estimation of efficiency of economic potential of land resources on the territory of the region, where volume of gross output of agricultural production is considered a principal one.

One of the main groups in agriculture is plant cultivation. The crop production combines growing of grain, cotton, vegetable, viticulture, tobacco cultivation, etc. One of the main factors in the activities of plant-growing as well as in grain-growing is the efficient using of land. Agriculture is characterized by number of specific socio-economic, natural and technological characteristics. Unlike other sectors of the economy, the main means of production is land. Land differs from other agricultural production facilities. Land is not a product of human activity, it is the product of nature. The land area cannot be increased nor decreased as other means of production, its natural fertility and productivity can be increased. Land area has been divided into zones according to its location, quality and rating. Agricultural farming on unfavourable land areas requires more funds than on favourable land plots. In the article, using grain crops efficiency data, increase of soil fertility and issues in the direction of increasing productivity facing entrepreneurial farms were studied.

As result of land reform in Russian Federation the public administration of agricultural land has been totally transformed. Land reform was carried out in order to solve problems in the sphere of agriculture, housing construction, ecology, creating a plurality of land ownership forms, introducing land use payments, etc. The decision to cancel monopoly of state ownership in land and to create institution of private property was made. The land redistribution projects for each farm were made, where stock of shares, stock of land redistribution and stock of land administered by previous soviet village councils was represented. The example of the Samara region was used to develop mechanisms for transfer of public land to private ownership. Currently, the situation with use of the land in many agricultural enterprises can be considered as unsatisfactory due to unsystematic economic activity − there are no or are not implemented scientifically based crop rotations, natural soil fertility is not taken into account, there is no modern cartographic material indicating the size of the fields, degree of slope and degree of erosion. Significant deterioration of the agro-ecological situation and the spread of negative processes on arable land require changes in national land policy and development of comprehensive measures to organize rational use of land. In the near future, a significant modernization of national and federal land legislation is planned, which will affect all subjects of the Russian Federation in terms of the management and use of agricultural land.