Legal Issues of Agricultural Land Use by Owners and Workers

Abstract

The study investigates the problems of compliance with the legislative requirements in the use of agricultural land in Ukraine, depending on who directly extracts useful properties from such land plots: employees of agricultural enterprises, or the owners of these lands – farmers, members of agricultural cooperatives, citizens who engaging in agricultural production activities individually. The article provides examples of the impact of the activities of workers and the labour of agricultural landowners on the state of land use, compliance with environmental safety requirements, deterioration, and improvement of the quality of land plots. Research of legal issues of targeted, rational, and efficient use of land plots, ensuring the requirements for the preservation of the natural environment, biological diversity and ecosystems contained in the study, provide an opportunity to draw certain conclusions, the essence of which comes down to the fact that the current state of legal relations concerning the use of land plots by employees and landowners needs to be reformed. This is conditioned upon the fact that employees are not motivated to improve the quality of land and its soils, comply with environmental safety requirements, and preserve biological diversity in ecosystems that include the corresponding land plots. Since the main motivation is to obtain a certain benefit, and sanctions for non-compliance with the requirements of legislation in the field of land protection are inefficient, the use of hired labour in agriculture is often described as a negligent and mindless attitude towards land use and ensuring environmental safety. But the owner or user of a land plot that uses it as a farmer, cooperative member, entrepreneur, etc., is motivated not only to make a profit at a given time, but also to improve its quality characteristics, ensure environmental safety, and preserve ecosystem biological diversity, since this is a factor in the stability of obtaining profits from agricultural activities performed on a certain site and in the future