Exploring agroforestry systems and practices in the Terai and hill regions of Nepal

This paper explores the status of agroforestry systems and practices in the Terai and hill regions of Nepal. Field survey, semi-structured interview and focus group discussions with the local farmers and stakeholders were conducted to explore the status of the agroforestry system and practices. The study covers forty-three districts, and represents agroforestry systems and practices in the Terai and hill regions of Nepal. Altogether, twelve agroforestry systems and forty-three agroforestry practices were documented in the Terai and hills of Nepal- ten systems in the Terai and seven systems in the hills. Agrisilviculture, agrisilvihorticulture, agrosilvopastoral, agrohortosilvopastoral, homegarden, hortiagriculture, silvofishery, agrosilvifishery, hortisilviculture and apiculture were the major agroforestry systems adopted in the Terai whereas those adopted in the hills included hortiagriculture, agrisilviculture, agrisilvihorticulture, agrosilvopastoral, homegarden, hortosilvipastoral and silvopastoral. The study revealed a gradual emerging scenario of commercial agroforestry systems in these regions although the continuation of traditional agroforestry systems was observed in most of the Terai and hill regions. Insufficient labour availability, fragmentation of land, market price fluctuation, lack of technical knowledge, and wild animal disturbances were some of the major challenges observed in the Terai and hills of Nepal.

COMPARATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LAND MARKET IN THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE AND UKRAINE: PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF CONCLUDING BUYING AND SALE AGREEMENTS AGRICULTURAL LAND

The provisions of the scientific article provide a comparative description of the functioning of the “land market” in Europe and Ukraine, as well as analyze the practical aspects of concluding contracts of sale of agricultural land. The authors propose to understand the “land market” as public relations regulated by the current legislation of Ukraine arising from the exercise by landowners of subjective rights to such plots, including public authorities and local governments exercising the rights of the owner to land on behalf of the Ukrainian people. The study examines the experience of the “land market” and the conclusion of contracts of sale of the latter in Germany, Latvia and France and identifies common and distinctive features of such functioning with the practice of Ukraine. The study analyzes the positive provisions of the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on the Circulation of Agricultural Land”, namely: lifting the moratorium on the purchase and sale of agricultural land; establishing requirements for citizens of the country regarding the availability of special education and experience in the field of agriculture; setting restrictions on the maximum area of agricultural land provided to one person; creation of a special body, the main function of which is to control the sale and purchase transactions; granting a preemptive right to a tenant, a local government body or a specially created body; establishment of control for the purpose of acquisition of agricultural land and the price of the contract. The authors identified shortcomings in the procedure for concluding contracts for the sale of agricultural land under Ukrainian law and proposed to use the experience of leading European countries that have already passed their own path of transformation of the “land market” and have accumulated extensive positive experience of the institute of purchase and sale of agricultural land. appointment. The authors came to the conclusion that the issue of the legal procedure for concluding contracts of sale of agricultural land still needs detailed scientific elaboration and improvement in practice.

Regenerative Green Infrastructure Governance in Weak, Rebounding, and Wealthy Land Markets

Too often scholars valorize green infrastructure without critically examining the dynamic and multi-faceted ways that greening impacts urban environments. Cities are complex, evolving forces of their own, which grow and shrink according to time and place. Governance strategies in different economic conditions powerfully shape the impacts of specific green infrastructure installations. They determine the value, quality, quantity, and spatial arrangement of green infrastructure. However, most scholarship focuses on the psychological, social, economic, and environmental benefits of urban greening. Green infrastructure is overwhelmingly studied as apart from historical urban governance trajectories, and it largely fails to consider the role of greening within the process of urban regeneration. This disconnect constitutes a significant gap that constrains understanding of green infrastructure for regenerative cities, and it limits our ability to strategically deploy it in beneficial rather than harmful or irrelevant ways. In this article, I argue that green infrastructure lays fundamentally different roles in poor and wealthy parts of cities, and that these roles change as the overall rank and status of the cities change over time. These changing meanings cause city governments to treat green infrastructure as fundamentally different targets of management. These conclusions are based on an ethnography of the public policy processes surrounding urban greening in three cities with different land markets. In the strong land market, the emphasis is placed firmly on revenue-generating projects, and the major players are private firms in conjunction with city departments. Greening is conceived as a byproduct of large-scale development projects, and rarely apart from them. In the weak land market city, in contrast, the environmental and civic organizations play major roles, and they conceive of green infrastructure apart from development projects. Weak land markets seem to create the possibility for increased political participation of environmental actors and for the installation of green infrastructure for the primary purpose of community health and well-being. However, the increased strength of environmental civic coalitions appears negatively correlated with the city's economic capacity to fund greening projects without support from the business community. These dynamics suggest a counter-cyclical relationship between the political will for urban greening and the investment capacity to pay for it. The analysis of green infrastructure in different land markets demonstrates that green infrastructure is deeply embedded in the historical and geographical legacies of cities.

LAND USE OPTIMIZATION IN UKRAINE AT THE STAGE OF LAND MARKET FORMATION

In the context of the reform of the sale of agricultural land, the priority is to optimize land use, which is to find a balance of land that would meet their environmental, economic and social compliance with the functions of the agricultural sector. Two main approaches to the optimization process are considered. The first is by intensifying agriculture with significant energy costs, land depletion and the inevitable increase in environmental pressures. And the second is the gradual formation of a balanced agrosphere with alternative agriculture and environmentally friendly livestock. The structure of land plots in terms of regions of Ukraine, which in the conditions of the land market does not promote balanced land use, is analyzed. Acquired arable land will not be transferred to other categories of land at auctions, even if it is significantly degraded. When forming the pricing policy in the land sector, it is important to compare the value of arable land in Ukraine and European countries. This comparative analysis shows the underestimated value of arable land in Ukraine (the lowest figure in Europe is less than 1 thousand euros / ha) at the initial stage of sale. It is estimated that the six-year lease of arable land at this stage of land reform is more appropriate than their sale. The fact of plowing part of pastures under these conditions and increasing the share of arable land in river valleys, drained lands, etc. is alarming. According to the results of the calculations, Table 1 shows the value of arable land, pastures, hayfields by administrative regions. The comparative characteristic of agricultural lands on the available highly productive lands is carried out. The highest share of such lands in Ternopil, Poltava and Cherkasy oblasts was found out, which provides for their highest valuation. The created map diagram of the general cost assessment of agricultural lands demonstrates their land resource potential and reflects the spatial differentiation of this indicator by typological groups of regions. The authors analyzed the optimization model of land use in Ukraine, developed by a group of leading domestic scientists under the project "Sustainable Development Programs", and proposed to consider the category of productive lands as basic arable lands, the share of which in Ukraine is 44.8% of arable land. The directions of reforming land relations in Ukraine taking into account historical traditions and granting the highest status of the basic land user - the rural community are offered. At the same time to make calculations, based on the results of which to identify production types (specialization) of farms, which will be the most objective, as it takes into account local natural and economic conditions; - on the basis of specialization of peasant farms, study of types of land use in enterprises of various forms of ownership and data on natural land fertility to perform agricultural zoning of the territory; - in each allocated agricultural area, the whole array of land in use, divided into at least 3 groups: 1) lands of peasant farms, which over time should be granted the right of life ownership with the possibility of inheritance and on which the state should support non-profit, subsistence farming; 2) lands withdrawn from agricultural circulation due to the destruction of their natural fertility and those to be transferred to the nature reserve fund, and, over time, included in the national ecological network; 3) lands that have not yet lost their natural fertility and those that are in the use of agricultural enterprises of various forms of ownership. Key words: land optimization, monetary valuation of agricultural lands, land resource potential, spatial differentiation of lands, land relations.

Market Power in Agricultural Land Markets: Concepts and Empirical Challenges

This paper provides review about challenges and opportunities to assess and quantify market power in agricultural land markets. Measuring land market power is challenging because the characteristics of this production factor hinder the direct application of familiar concepts from commodity markets. Immobility, fixed availability, and large heterogeneity of land and potential users contradict assumptions of fictitious point market for homogeneous goods. Moreover, the use of concentration indicators for policy assessments is hampered by two problems. First, defining the relevant regional size of the market is challenging and concentration indicators are not robust with regard to market size and number of actors. Second, high concentration of land ownership or land operation may point at potential market power, but it may also be the result of an efficient allocation of land due to structural change in agriculture. The aforementioned challenges are illustrated with a case study for the Federal State of Brandenburg in Germany. Using available data for land sales, a regression analysis reveals a negative relationship between land use concentration and farmland prices. This result can be interpreted as an indication of market power on the buyer side in agricultural land markets. However, it is hardly possible to translate this finding into recommendations for land market regulations because the evaluation of the potential misuse of dominant positions in land markets requires a case-specific analysis. Providing evidence for the exertion of market power in land markets is extremely complex and deserves further attention from researchers and politicians.

CONSEQUENCES OF LAND REFORM IN UKRAINE ON THE EXAMPLE OF GEORGIA AND MOLDOVA

The article is aimed at investigating the expediency of land reform in Ukraine. The process and consequences of land reforms in Georgia and Moldova are considered. The indicators of development of the agricultural sector and the degree of involvement of the population in it are revealed. The world experience of land distribution was analysed. The most effective strategy of land reform development by analysing the research in the dependence of efficiency of land plots utilization on the size of households that cultivate them was revealed. The efficiency of agroholdings and family farms is compared. Determined trends in the distribution and size of plots in developed countries. Analysed the gradual adoption of decisions in the development of land reform and their effects on the success of such reform in Georgia and Moldova. The current decisions of the Ukrainian government on the way to reforming land distribution and use of land resources are considered. Parallels of the current Ukrainian land reform based on the experience of Moldova and Georgia are identified. The assumption of success and expediency of the decisions taken, which could potentially come into force when the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine discusses the format of the land reform, was put forward. Analysed the further development of the land sector according to the gradual entry into force of the adopted legislation. The issues of expediency of opening the land market to foreigners were considered. Penetrated the experience of international partners and countries already decided on the admission or non-admission of foreign contractors to the national land market. The degree of development of accounting and inventory of existing land plots and completeness of filling the land cadastre of the three countries under study was determined. The research method was the analysis of the current land system of Georgia and Moldova by studying articles on the dynamics of changes in local legislation. The main economic indicators that may indicate the degree of success of the reforms in these countries are considered. Due to such indicators, a detailed analysis of the latest changes in the legislation of Ukraine predicted and assessed the feasibility of the reforms.

Clasificación espacial del suelo urbano por el valor especulativo del suelo e imágenes MSI satelitales usando K-MEANS, Huancayo, Perú

The city of Huancayo, like other intermediate cities in Latin America, faces problems of poorly planned land-use changes and a rapid dynamic of the urban land market. The scarce and outdated information on the urban territory impedes the adequate classification of urban areas, limiting the form of its intervention. The purpose of this research was the adoption of unassisted and mixed methods for the spatial classification of urban areas, considering the speculative land value, the proportion of urbanized land, and other geospatial variables. Among the data collection media, Multi-Spectral Imagery (MSI) from the Sentinel-2 satellite, the primary road system, and a sample of direct observation points, were used. The processed data were incorporated into georeferenced maps, to which urban limits and official slopes were added. During data processing, the K-Means algorithm was used, together with other machine learning and assisted judgment methods. As a result, an objective classification of urban areas was obtained, which differs from the existing planning.

THE PRICE OF AGRICULTURAL LAND, TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE COST OF ECOSYSTEM SERVICES OF SOILS

According to the latest data of the State Service of Ukraine for Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre on the normative monetary valuation of farmland in the regions of Ukraine, the results of calculations of the minimum and maximum initial price of agricultural land in Ukraine are given, as well as the average cost per hectare, which is almost one and a half times higher than their approximate starting value, announced with the opening of the domestic land market. The classification of factors of change of the price of hectare of agricultural land structured in three groups is proposed and accordingly specified: i) general factors of formation of the price of agricultural lands; ii) factors of price increase; iii) factors reducing the price of agricultural land. For the first time, such a factor in the formation of the price of agricultural land as the amount of income from the consumption of ecosystem services is presented and revealed. The importance of this factor is proved by the results of monetary assessment of the contribution of two types of ecosystem services of agricultural soils of local ecosystem assets of the Mykolayiv Oblast: regulatory services for soil carbon retention provided by the soils of lands of natural growth of agricultural crops, and providing services for the supply of crops provided by the soils of agricultural lands.. The results of hypothetical extrapolation of the value of the contribution of the providing ecosystem service for crop supply, which produced by chernozem soils of agricultural lands of the ecosystem assets of the territorial community of Semenivka village of Mykolayiv Oblast to the size of the initial value of agricultural lands of the regional ecosystem assets of the Mykolayiv Oblast are given. As a result, a much more expensive, but more realistic indicative price per hectare of land for the region is obtained, taking into account the amount of income from the use of such an ecosystem service of chernozem soil. It is concluded that there is a strong potential for growth of agricultural prices in the regions of Ukraine, as well as the actual unpreparedness of the starting price positions of the land market in Ukraine, primarily due to inconsistency of the current initial land price with objective socio-economic realities.