Ecological Capacity of the Land Use System as a Determining Factor of its Productivity

The ability of the economic system to meet the growing needs of society without losing natural resources or significantly reducing their quality properties can be predicted by the factor of ecological capacity of agricultural land use, which harmonizes economic and environmental components of agricultural land use by harmonizing social welfare and resource potential. The implementation of this approach should lead to the reconciliation of differences in the growth rates of economic prosperity and environmental decline, which is the quintessence in the practice of sustainable agricultural land use, as an essential norm in long-term exploitation of natural resources by current and future generations. Therefore, taking into account the factor of ecological capacity of lands as a criterion of productivity of agricultural lands is not in doubt. Purpose. The goal of this research is substantiation of the essence of the factor of ecological capacity of lands, determination of its components and the need for its forecasting in order to preserve the productive properties of lands. Results. It is proved that unreasonable human actions year after year lead to the transformation of qualitative properties of productive soils. Direct depletion of lands occurs due to insufficient application of organic fertilizers, excessive plowing of landscapes, neglect of field crop rotations, and excessive removal of nutrients by commercial crops, reduction of organic residues entering the soil, and so on. In this situation, the system of agricultural land use needs to be restructured as soon as possible in order to increase human welfare as long as possible, and in the long run to significantly reduce the pressure on the environment. In this context, the available natural resources should be directed not only to the development of the current economy, but also to serve as a basis for a guaranteed extension of the life cycle of ecologically dependent human civilization. The introduction of the factor of ecological capacity of lands will allow warning landowners and landing users about the danger of crisis phenomena associated with the emergence of threatening facts or the emergence of dangerous conditions. Conclusions. After conducting research, we conclude that the factor of ecological capacity of lands is the ability of the system of agricultural land use, its constituent subsystems or individual elements to synthesize, identify, update, accumulate and multiply the value properties of land. This ensures the required level of productivity in the face of ever-increasing anthropogenic pressure from individual actors.