Penza, 11 April 2013. PenzaNews. 73 thousand hectares of unused arable land were returned to the Penza region in 2012. This was announced by the Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the region Sergey Churakov during the workshop-meeting on the issue of returning unused agricultural land in the economy of the region, held in Philharmonic on Thursday, April 11.

“The work was most actively carried out in Bashmakovsky, Maloserdobinsky, Lopatinsky, and Belinsky areas,” Sergey Churakov noted.

However, he stressed that the share of unused agricultural land remains high — about 24% of the total area of arable land.

“Together with the regional departments of the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia and the Federal service of state registration, cadaster and cartography, we found major land owners who do not use their land. Also, we identified around 265 hectares of unclaimed land shares of the citizens. Municipalities work on registering those land shares as municipal,” the press service of the regional government quoted by the First Deputy Minister of Agriculture.