Agriculture Minister Aidarbek Saparov stated at a board meeting of the ministry that the risk of land degradation due to natural and anthropogenic factors persists. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
"For Kazakhstan, land is a strategic resource ensuring food security. Currently, 117.7 million hectares of land are in circulation. Of these, 26.5 million hectares are arable land, 83.9 million hectares are pastures, 2.4 million hectares are hayfields, and 4.9 million hectares are other categories. The risk of land degradation due to natural and anthropogenic factors persists," said Saparov.
To systematically address this issue, the state is implementing a number of comprehensive measures. Including work under the UN Convention to Combat Desertification to achieve land degradation neutrality targets.
At the meeting, it was reported that specialists have updated land degradation maps for an area of 53.5 million hectares. "The actual area of degraded land in the surveyed territories is 2.7 million hectares, or about 5%. Monitoring of all 182 million hectares of agricultural land is planned to be completed by 2029," the ministry said.
It was also noted that since 2022, 15 million hectares of land have been returned to state ownership, of which 11.3 million hectares have been redistributed. Including 4.2 million hectares transferred for common use. As a result, the pasture deficit has been reduced to 3.5 million hectares.