This article reviews the initiatives for setting up rational use and protection of agricultural lands in order to ensure accelerated growth of the agricultural sector of the Russian Federation, enhancing its sustainability, efficiency, competitiveness, and environmental safety. It is hereby proposed to complete the differentiation of public lands into federal property, property of the subjects of the Russian Federation, property of municipal settlements; as well as to conduct topographic survey of lands in the Russian Federation (to establish and locally document the boundaries of territories of the subjects of the Russian Federation; municipal settlements; communities; special-purpose lands; areas with special land use conditions; and to systematically (once every 5 years) perform agricultural land inventory in order to identify unused, irrationally used or non-purposely used lands, as well as land use in violation of the relevant permitted use of land plots; to relaunch land survey works relating with the performance of pedologic, geobotanical and other studies and research.

The solution of preserving and restoring the soil fertility problem of agricultural lands in the process of economic activity is one of the main tasks in achieving global food security. Implementation of a complex of soil protection measures, as a rule, ensures the preservation and even growth of soil fertility. Therefore, the purpose of the article is to determine the economic efficiency of introducing soil protection measures in the use of agricultural land. For this purpose, the following tasks were set and solved: the analysis of the current state and trends of the land resources use in agriculture; to investigate the tendencies of carrying out measures on preservation of soil fertility and prevention of its degradation; to substantiate scientific and methodical estimation principles of economic efficiency of introduction of soil protection measures in the conditions of Ukraine. The following basic methods were used to solve the research objectives: monographic analysis – when developing scientific publications on environmentally friendly use of agricultural land; comparative and statistical analysis – in studying the dynamics of the structure of the land fund of Ukraine by main types of land and economic activity; system-structural analysis and grouping – in the study of the nature and content of ecological and economic consequences of soil degradation, as well as approaches to assessing the economic effectiveness of soil protection measures; economic analysis and calculation of relative indicators – to evaluate the economic efficiency of soil protection measures in the process of agricultural land use; abstract-logical method − for theoretical generalizations and conclusions formation, etc. Established that soil degradation is now one of the most important industrial and environmental issues, which is the main reason for the inability to achieve high rates of environmental and economic efficiency of land use in the future. It was also substantiated scientific and methodical approach to determining the economic efficiency of soil conservation measures in the current market conditions, which is based on the additional income that is received as a result of increase crop yields on protected lands. It is established that effective protection of soils from degradation is possible with the systematic implementation of soil protection measures complex, developed taking into account the specific natural and economic conditions of each region or agricultural enterprise. The priority directions of realization measures on land protection are given.