Žemių melioravimo būklė ir plėtros strateginės kryptys

ENIn Lithuania there are about 3 min. ha of drained lands. 2.5 min. ha of it are drained by subsurface drainage. The analysis of situation in land drainage sector shows that area of drained lands decreases by tens of thousands hectares from year to year. The main reason was not successful solution made in the beginning of land reform when the state the drained land gave back to the owners but drainage systems were left as property of the state as was before. Happened so, that both owners become not able to manage drainage systems in proper way because shortage of financing. The next reason is that part of drained land is derelict because land has not real owners or to use some land in agriculture is not profitable. In such situation, when the owners are not able to take care about drainage systems in time or some of them are not interested at all, part of drainage network stops functioning. In order to improve the situation the first requirement is to solve the problem of drainage systems property. The next step would be to develop new forms of drainage systems management. It is clear that in the future not all drained lands will be used in agriculture. For that the main attention must be given to the maintenance of drainage systems on promising plots.