Payment for environmental services to promote land aptitude.

Payments for environmental services (PES) consist of a way of promoting conservation by providing a financial reward to landowners. We propose an approach to determine the potential of a region for implementing PES based on the land potential for agriculture. PES is a powerful mechanism able to contribute for at least ten United Nations sustainable development goals. The study area consists of the headwaters of two important basins in Brazil: the Doce and the Jequitinhonha rivers. The potential for agricultural use was determined based on lithology, soil class, and slope of the terrain layers. The land use was classified using Sentinel images between August 2019 and March 2020. The potential of environmental services were mapped overlapping the land use, the protected areas, and the potential for agricultural. We found that 42.9% of the land have low potential; 31.6% have moderate potential, 23.6% have high potential and 1.9% have very high agricultural. Native vegetation and rocky outcrops accounted together for 75% of the area. Pasture occupies another 22.3%, urban area 1.38%, mining 0.83% and agriculture 0.04%. We found that 87.3% of the land classified as low agricultural potential are still covered by native vegetation or rocky outcrops, and are natural candidates to enter a PES program. Livestock farming or agriculture developed in low potential areas are candidates for land retirement and restoration. The livestock farming is the dominant economic activity in the region, with annualized present value of US$ 106.77 per hectare, and should be the reference for the annual payment for natural areas included in a PES program. The annual budget for the PES program implementation aiming at the preservation of the current natural vegetation is US$ 10.8 millions.

Technique for Determining the Potential Use of Disturbed Lands for Agriculture in Mining Region

The retrospective dynamics of land use in the Kemerovo region since the Soviet period is presented in the study. The survey of views of the scientific community regarding the development of reclamation of lands allocated to industry was conducted. The statistics are reflected: areas of lands disturbed by the activities of open pits and mines in the mining region; the number of land law violations; land retirement. A technique is presented for determining the potential use of disturbed lands for agriculture in order to identify their suitability or unsuitability for reclamation; its algorithm including seven consecutive stages is presented. Indicators that contribute to maximizing income from each plot suitable for long-term agricultural reclamation were selected.

On the Issue of Food Security of Coal Mining Region

The problems of food security of Kemerovo region are studied in the article. It was found that agribusiness and its performance are significantly affected by the pronounced industry orientation of the region, in which coal mining is intensively developed, which is accompanied by the annual land retirement. Assessing the food security of the region in terms of balanced nutrition in terms of calories, protein, fats and carbohydrates in food, one could conclude that they are not consistent with the vital needs of people. The imbalance of nutrition of the population affects its health, which, according to epidemiologists, is commensurate with genetic, active chemical or infectious negative effects on humans. To address food security of the region, a forecast of food consumption by the population was developed taking into account scientifically-based nutrition standards, taking into account: the level of money income and purchasing power of the population, effective demand for agricultural products; production capacity of agricultural industry and production facilities. It is proposed to apply a synergistic approach based on the creation of an agri-food cluster.

MANAGEMENT AND AGRICULTURAL LAND USES OF THAI PEOPLE IN THE WEST OF NGHE AN PROVINCE, VIETNAMq

This paper presents the finding the characteristics of management and agricultural land uses of Thai people in agricultural production. The impact of these characteristics on sustainable development was analysised by the strengths, weakness, opportunities, threats in order to storage and promote these values in the sustainable agriculture development on sloping land in the west of Nghe An province, Vietnam. This study used Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) method to collect primary materials through interviews 210 households and stakeholders at area study by main semi-structured interviewing (SSI) and Venn diagram and SWOT tools to analysis. The research revealed that Thai acquired a lot of experience in farming on sloping that play an important role in sustainable agricultural development, such as the land management, cultivation on upland (classify the field, technique of cultivation on upland, fertilizer, land “retirement”, domesticating native plants, etc.). Beside the strengths, these traditional cultivation is facing many obstacles, in which, knowledge loss gradually, even in danger of disappearing in this area is the biggest threat. Otherwise, base on the opportunities, some solutions was suggested to store, apply and manage the indigenous knowledge (IK) for sustainable agricultural in the west Nghe An province.