The problem of bringing unused agricultural land into economic circulation remains acute for Russia’s agrarian sector. As of 2025, the area of such land amounts to nearly 50 million hectares, 20 million of which are arable land — pointing to a significant untapped resource potential. This study is based on an analysis of the National Report on the State and Use of Land in the Russian Federation (2025), data from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture, and relevant legal acts: the Land Code of the Russian Federation, Federal Law No. 101-FZ “On the Circulation of Agricultural Land,” and Federal Law No. 78-FZ “On Land Use Planning” (including the draft of its new 2025 revision). The methods employed include systems analysis, comparative legal analysis, and statistical assessment. The main drivers of land withdrawal have been identified: spatial inaccessibility (lack of road infrastructure), the weak economic position of farms, legal and spatial uncertainty in the sphere of shared common ownership, and natural-climatic factors. The authors propose that, for each land use planning unit containing shared common ownership land and unused agricultural land, a project be developed to differentiate such land by type of tenure arrangement (organization of farm enterprises, lease, unclaimed shares), taking into account design solutions for land development. This would shorten the approval timeline for boundary-setting projects and prevent a shortage of land use rights. An integrated approach — combining legal, economic (subsidies, preferential loans), and organizational measures — can bring significant areas of farmland back into productive use.
Semochkin et al. (Sun,) studied this question.