The Cabinet of Ministers approved a new unified methodology for normative monetary valuation of land plots, and experts from our Department of Mathematical Modeling and Data Analysis together with NASA LCLUC project partners from the University of Maryland analyzed how the methodology for estimating agricultural land value under new legislation reflects crop yields.
The study shows that given the impact of modern agricultural practices and climate change, there is a need to revise the coefficients of agricultural land value to better reflect the real productivity of fields, which will help increase the economic potential of agriculture in the country and the effectiveness of measures to combat desertification.
The analysis between crop yields and soil quality indicators was performed using three main data sources. The first is the official statistics on crop yields provided by the State Statistics Service of Ukraine for 2016-2018. The second source of data is the geospatial map of soils of Ukraine, which is based on data from the national soil atlas of Ukraine. The third source is a map of the natural-agricultural area. Using these maps with known values of quality for each type of soil, we create quality maps for Ukraine. Further analysis of these products was performed using statistical methods of regression analysis and correlation analysis.
Read more in the article «Is Soil Bonitet an Adequate Indicator for Agricultural Land Appraisal in Ukraine?», published in the international scientific journal “Sustainability” published by MDPI.