The article highlights the environmental problems of land use, its rationalization; optimal use of agricultural lands, in particular, arable lands; a modern interpretation of the content of rational use of agricultural lands. Environmental and economic aspects of this problem are considered. The information data necessary for the decision of this problem are given, namely indicators of natural-agricultural zoning, regional ecological and economic features of manufacture of the basic production of agriculture, indicators of properties and quality of soils and agrobiological requirements of the main crops to natural, primarily soil, environment, indicators of yields of these crops and data on production costs and revenues.
The organization of ecologically safe land use is recommended in three stages. The first stage consists of allocating areas growing certain crops in Ukraine, that agroecological interpretation materials natural and agricultural zoning to study the environmental conditions of production agriculture. If the growing zones of certain crops have specific, inherent only in each of them, geographical areas, then it is determined where and which crops in terms of natural conditions should be located.
The second stage of identifying the ecological and economic features of the production of basic agricultural products based on data on natural conditions, especially soil, is to determine the suitability of land for the area within the growing zones.
The third stage of the organization of ecologically safe land use is to determine according to the data on the suitability of soils of the territory with optimal conditions for growing the crop, i.e. where the best and with the highest assessment of soils prevail. The growing zone can have at least three such agronomic regions (districts) — with the best, average, and worst conditions. In modern conditions, when prices of goods forming market relations, accounting for differences in land productivity as a productive resource becomes a necessary objective condition for the profitable and ecologically safe existence of agriculture.