Volume 55, September 2016, Pages 86–97
Highlights
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- The Soviet soil protection system was destroyed by agricultural transition.
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- A new set of soil protection rules have not been developed.
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- Soil protection went to being regulated by social norms of agricultural producers.
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- Present farmers efforts are not sufficient to combat soil erosion
Abstract
At
the time of post-socialist agricultural transition in Ukraine the focus
was on privatisation of land resources, decentralisation and
restructuring of the sector. While its impact on agricultural
productivity has been thoroughly analysed, there have been few studies
addressing the environmental effects of the process. Using the method of
document analysis, this paper examines in detail the change in
institutions regulating soil protection in agriculture and discusses its
implications for the behaviour of agricultural producers and specific
soil protection measures applied. The results of analysis suggest that
having destroyed the elaborate Soviet soil protection system, Ukraine
did not manage to develop a new set of legal rules, nor their
enforcement mechanisms, to enable soil protection in the new political
and economic setting. This paper discusses the reasons for this
institutional failure and provides insights that can be applied to
assess the impact of agricultural transition on soils in other countries
in Europe and beyond.
Keywords
- agricultural transition;
- institutional change;
- soil degradation;
- soil protection;
- Ukraine
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