AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
including consumption of raw materials such as cotton, metals
etc. The average EU member uses about 1.3 ha of land per year,
which is six times more than the total population of Bangladesh.
Such an insatiable European demand for land has a massive
disastrous impact on the environment, politics and social life
(Soil Atlas, 2018).
The Czech Republic currently faces severe drought,
fundamentally caused by deforestation, destroying groves and
concreting the landscape. The intense water drain from roofs,
industrial areas, public places and roads straight to the sewerage
(the whole procedure does not include water-accumulating land)
and temperature rise involving increased water vapour currently
pose enormous problems.
The soil in the Czech Republic has lost the ability to soak and
retain water, as heavy downpours wash away its most fertile
layer. Approximately 20 million tonnes of arable land disappear
every year, thus reducing its capacity to preserve water equal to
6 millions m3 of water per year, which is total consumption of
roughly 130,000 people (De Luce, 2020).
Soil constitutes an integral part of the environment with a large
scale of functions – multifunctionality, which involves, in terms
of human needs, three groups: utility, environmental and
cultural. The utility function serves as an essential production
tool in agriculture and forestry, giving rise to crops and forest
fruits, produces a space for human activities (housing, recreation,
life etc.), economic use (constructions, infrastructure, dumping
etc.) and provides invaluable natural resources.
From all kinds of erosion, water erosion presents the deadliest
threat to the land in the Czech Republic. Due to the intensified
agricultural production in the past, the Czech Republic has the
hugest land blocks in Europe, which only leads to even more
severe water erosions. National land redistribution involved
massively removing hydrographic and other landscape elements,
destroying baulks, grassing valley lines, dirt roads, liquidating
luxuriant vegetation that effectively reduced rapid erosion.
(Ministry of Agriculture, 2018).
Soil sealing directly relates to uncontrolled sprawling
(suburbanization) and currently, together with erosion, poses an
enormous problem to agricultural land. Soil sealing means
covering the area with impermeable materials, causing that the
soil loses its natural properties and is unable to perform its
essential functions. What brings about soil sealing is relatively
low plot prices, when investors prefer building on a greenfield
rather than using built-up city area or renovating older buildings
(brownfield). (Ministry of Agriculture, 2018).
The recent decades have seen intense pressure on exempting
agricultural lands from the land fund with the prospect of
subsequent development. This step is, however, irreversible,
because it prevents our society from a commodity of ever-
increasing value (Polanecký et al., 2018).
Doc. Hruška from Global Change Research Institute of Academy
of Science claims that industrial agriculture uses large amounts
of artificial fertilizers and pesticides (in the event of the CZ, the
situation applies to vast fields without ecological elements such
as baulks, meadows, wetlands and alleys), leading to the loss of
biodiversity and water contamination caused by nitrogen-
pesticides chemical compounds. Industrial agriculture as such
shall thereby not draw on public funds due to its unsustainability
and damage caused to the public property. Based on this
situation, renowned scientists (coordinated by Dr Guy Pe’er
from German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research iDiv
in Leipzig) appeal in People and Nature Magazine to the
European Parliament, member states of the EU and the European
Commission to adopt ten emergency measures aiming at
sustainable food production, preserving biodiversity and
mitigating climatic changes (Czech Society for Ornithology,
2020).
The Civil Code defines the land as real property, and according
to Czech accounting, regulations shall be reported and evaluated
independently with no possibility of depreciation. The plot
involves areas not only above but also beneath the surface,
including constructions built on the land, subject to temporary
structures and vegetation on the parcel. The building parcel does
not comprise engineering networks (water pipelines, sewerage,
power networks etc.). The buying party shall divide the
purchasing price into a part relating to building and concerning
the land parcel. What applies here is the proportional distribution
provided by an expert and a professional evaluation of the land
using, e.g. price maps (Ryneš, 2019).
Lands are always long-term tangible assets irrespective of
valuation unless sold as a commodity. The valuation involves
forest grasslands and trees and bushes not integrated into the
cultivation of permanent vegetation.
The accounting and tax viewpoint also draws a line between the
land and the parcel. The land refers to the Earth’s surface
detached from neighbouring parts by a boundary of
administration unit or boundary of cadastre unit, real property
boundary, possession, land type etc. The parcel means a land
determined by a planimetric survey point and depicted and
designated by a land parcel number in the cadastral map.
The land can be bargained by purchase, gratituous acquisition,
deposit from another person, or transferred pursuant to the
effective legislation, or transferred from private enjoyment to
business purposes. The accounting case is discharged as of the
date of the delivery of the proposal for filing to the cadastre.
(Sagit, 2020)
International Accounting Standards IAS 16 define lands as
tangible assets held by the accounting unit for uses in the
production, supplying or services, so that they could be rented to
other persons, or for administrative purposes for enjoyment in
the duration of exceeding one period. Lands recognized as assets
are evaluated through purchase costs, including the purchasing
price and taxes. Lands of which the real value can be precisely
determined after the recognition are reported in the revaluated
amount that complies with the real value to the date of the
revaluation after deducing accumulated losses from the reduced
value. Revaluation should be performed on the regular basis, so
that the accounting value is not significantly different from the
real value, determined at the end of the accounting period. The
real value of the land is usually calculated from the market price
recommended by a qualified expert (Oswald, 2020). VAT Act
does not explicitely define term ‘land’, only stating that pursuant
to the cadastral law, the land refers to an Earth’s surface sector
limited by means listed in the real property cadastre. The
boundaries are either natural, or made by a human. The Civil
Code defines the land as a land recorded in the real property
cadastre with allocated land parcel number.
Lands in the territory of the Czech Republic recorded in the real
property cadastre are liable to the property tax, subject to lands
composed of protective woods and special-purpose woods or
lands used for the protection of the CZ (Czech Republic, 1992b)
The analytical part examines historical data comparing the
structure of the currently used agricultural land according to
categories within individual EU countries and throughout the
European Union. Specific member states of the EU are explored
in terms of their average value UAA per inhabitant. Calculated
linear trend functions predict agricultural activities regarding
land categories for all member states of the EU and, also, the
total sum for the whole EU.
The applied statistical tools involve tables, diagrams and charts
of descriptive statistics and intermediate time series resources.
Calculations suggested in tables and diagrams were elaborated
by Excel Program (Chajdiak, 2013, Stuchlý, 2015).
3 Results
Immediate time series represent historical data on the size,
structure and development of the used agricultural land. The
analyses thereby involve convetional methods of calculating and
interpreting some of the numeral characteristics of time series
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