In 1970 agricultural land comprised almost 15 million acres, or 53 percent of the country's land area. Sixty-nine percent of the agricultural land was suitable for field crops; 4 percent consisted of meadows; and about 6 percent was devoted to vineyards, orchards, and other perennial crops. Natural pastures constituted more than 20 percent of the agricultural land. Bulgarian economists have repeatedly pointed out that the per capita acreage of farmland in the country, excluding pastures, is among the lowest in the world.

According to official statistics the area of agricultural land increased by 840,000 acres in the 1960s as a result of the expansion of grazing areas by 1.1 million acres and the simultaneous loss of 270,000 acres of cultivated land. The loss of cultivated acreage was caused by the diversion of land to industrial and other uses and by severe soil erosion. The acreage devoted to vineyards and orchards nevertheless increased by 100,000 acres, or 12 percent.

Land Protection

More than half the cultivated acreage is subject to erosion. Increasingly large areas degraded by erosion have remained uncultivated each year, but they continue to be included in the annual statistics on farmland acreage. The unused area of plowland expanded from 720,000 acres in 1960 to 1.26 million acres in 1970. Another 1.5 million to 2 million acres have been reported to suffer from erosion to a degree that will make it necessary to abandon them unless corrective measures are quickly taken. Only 70 percent of the acreage under fruit trees and vineyards bore fruit in 1970.

The government has long been aware of the need to arrest the loss of cultivated farmland. An intensive program of reforestation has been carried on over many years, but the rate of replanting has not been high enough to halt the ravages of erosion. Proposals advanced by agricultural experts to clear abandoned mountain farmland of noxious weeds and to develop these areas into improved pastures—measures that would also help control erosion—have not been acted upon.

In 1967 the continued loss of valuable farmland led to the promulgation of a special law for the preservation of land; details of this law are not available. In 1972 the Council of Ministers issued an order, effective January 1, 1973, that provided, in part, for payments to be made into a special land improvement fund in the event of diversion of farmland for construction purposes. Depending upon the quality of the land, payments into the fund range from 162 leva (for the value of the lev—see Glossary) to 48,560 leva per acre. Land used for afforestation, cemeteries, and housing or public works under the jurisdiction of town authorities is exempt from the payment requirement. The exemption also applies to land used for open pit mining on condition that the land is rehabilitated in accordance with plans and within time limits approved by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Food Industry (hereafter referred to as the Ministry of Agriculture).

In 1970 the government created special district councils for the preservation of cultivated land and, in May 1971, placed the councils under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture. The decree of 1971 required the ministry and district governments to take decisive measures for the increased protection of farmland. The decree also directed the chief prosecutor's office to increase control over the expropriation of farmland for construction and other nonagricultural purposes and to impose severe penalties on violators of the land protection law.

The land protection measures were not sufficiently effective. The acreage abandoned in the 1966-70 period was three times larger than the area abandoned in the preceding five years. In January 1973 an inspector of the Committee for State Control stated publicly that the farmland problem had become increasingly more serious and that the committee was obliged to intervene in order to identify shortcomings in the land preservation work and to assist in eliminating the deficiencies. At the same time the Council of Ministers reprimanded a deputy minister of agriculture and the heads of two district governments for grave shortcomings in the preservation and use of farmland.

In an effort to gain control over the deteriorating farmland situation, a new land protection law that replaced the law of 1967 was passed in March 1973. The new law explicitly provided that only land unsuitable for agricultural purposes or farmland of low productivity could be put to nonagricultural use. Under the law expansion of towns and villages was to be allowed only after a specified density of construction had been reached. Construction of country homes and resort facilities was restricted to land unsuitable for agriculture. Provision was made for regulations that would offer material and moral incentives to use unproductive land for construction purposes, and more severe penalties were prescribed for violations that result in the waste of arable land.

Irrigation