Soil Market and Soil Fund Analysis in Slovakia

Soil is considered an irreplaceable factor of production. Its properties are important for life on the Earth. The main goal of the paper is to analyze the development of individual components of the soil fund in the Slovak Republic in the period 2014-2020, to quantify indicators related to the production factor of soil and evaluate the development and structure of organically farmed agricultural land. The soil fund is divided into two categories, namely agricultural land, and non-agricultural land. From the point of view of the soil market, we will focus on the development of soil prices, the evaluation of land sales, and land lease. The area of agricultural land as well as its individual components decreased by 2020, except for the area of orchards, which increased by 3.55%. On the contrary, by 2020, the area of non-agricultural land increased, which was affected by the growing areas of its individual components. Arable land is 59% from all agricultural land. Agricultural land makes up about 49% of the total land area. There was an average of 0.438 ha of agricultural land and 0.035 ha of organically farmed agricultural land per capita for the whole period. The price of agricultural land has a growing trend from year to year. The rental price for agricultural land increased by 18% over the period under review. From the point of view of this indicator, Slovakia has the largest share of leased land in the total land area within the entire EU, at the level of about 90%. The area of ecologically farmed agricultural land is increasing from year to year, the support from the Rural Development Program of the Slovak Republic has a positive effect on the increase of its area.