Today, the first regional land forum was held in Svyatogorsk, Donetsk Oblast. It gathered farmers from Donetsk and Lugansk Oblast. The main issue on the agenda is land reform.

UAC Chairman Andriy Dykun stressed that small and medium-sized agricultural businesses together will be able to defend their position on the land market.

“We have a memorandum that we have signed with political forces. The same memorandum, but slightly adapted to the conditions of today, will be signed with the deputies elected by the first-past-the-post system. Further, our goal is to create an inter-factional parliamentary association and thus defend our interests”,said Andriy Dykun.

UAC Deputy Chairman Mikhail Sokolov told about the problems that prevent the immediate opening of the land market: raiding, lack of "cheap" loans for small and medium-sized businesses, clutter at the State Geocadastre. He also presented the Association's position on land market implementation in Ukraine. Thus, the land market should be launched in stages. In the first stages, the State Geocadastre should be filled and appropriate regulatory acts adopted to protect small and medium-sized agrarian businesses from raiding. At the same stage, the issue of agrarians' access to affordable loans at a low interest rate must be resolved.

Next, the land market should be opened in one of the oblasts of Ukraine within the framework of a pilot project in order to check how the legislation works. Only then, land reform could be carried out throughout Ukraine. At the same time, only natural persons with a maximum of 500 hectares will be eligible to buy land. Subsequently, the land market can also be opened for legal entities, which can purchase a maximum of 5 thousand hectares of land. Foreign nationals should not have the right to own Ukrainian land either as individuals or as legal entities.

Agrarians were actively involved in discussing the introduction of the land market, expressing their opinions and visions. They also shared other pressing issues: difficulties with fuel licensing, high prices for fertilizers, and so on.

We must remind you that on April 10 in Kiev there was an All-Ukrainian land forum, which visited more than 500 farmers from all over Ukraine. At that time, four candidates for the presidency and representatives of their teams expressed their vision for the introduction of the land market. The Deputy Chairman of the Agrarian Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Oleksandr Bakumenko presented for the first time four variants of introduction of the land market developed by the deputies. At the same time, UAC Chairman Andriy Dykun announced the holding of regional land forums in order to find out the opinion of most landowners regarding land reform.