From August 5 to 7, the Forum on Best Practices for Combating Desertification and Land Degradation is taking place in Grozny. Deputy Minister of Agriculture Andrey Razin spoke at the plenary session. He stated that preserving soil fertility is a condition for increasing agricultural production and strengthening Russia's position in the global food market. According to Roshydromet data, the average annual temperature in Russia is rising 2.5–2.8 times faster than the global average.
Based on joint research with the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 36 regions are in an arid climate zone, and over 34 million hectares of agricultural land are subject to various types of degradation. Razin noted the need to shift from responding to the consequences of degradation to preventing it based on scientific data. By government order, the Ministry of Agriculture is developing a draft federal program to improve soil fertility. Key areas include phytomelioration and agroforestry, introduction of adaptive landscape farming systems, soil-protective resource-saving technologies, and strengthening land condition monitoring, especially in arid regions.