eported to suffer from erosion to a degree that
will make it necessary to abandon them unless corrective measures are
quickly taken. Only 70 percent of the acreage under fruit trees and
vineyards bore fruit in 1970.

The government has long been aware of the need to arrest the loss of
cultivated farmland. An intensive program of reforestation has been
carried on over many years, but the rate of replanting has not been high
enough to halt the ravages of erosion. Proposals advanced by
agricultural experts to clear abandoned mountain farmland of noxious
weeds and to develop these areas into improved pastures--measures that
would also help control erosion--have not been acted upon.

In 1967 the continued loss of valuable farmland led to the promulgation
of a special law for the preservation of land; details of this law are
not available. In 1972 the Council of Ministers issued an order,
effective January 1, 1973, that provided, in part, for payments to be
made into a special land improvement fund in the event of diversion of
farmland for construction purposes. Depending upon the quality of the
land, payments into the fund range from 162 leva (for the value of the
lev--see Glossary) to 48,560 leva per acre. Land used for afforestation,
cemeteries, and housing or public works under the jurisdiction of town
authorities is exempt from the payment requirement. The exemption also
applies to land used for open pit mining on condition that the land is
rehabilitated in accordance with plans and within time limits approved
by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Food Industry (hereafter referred
to as the Ministry of Agriculture).

In 1970 the government created special district councils for the
preservation of cultivated land and, in May 1971, placed the councils
under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture. The decree of
1971 required the ministry and district governments to take decisive
measures for the increased protection of farmland. The decree also
directed the chief prosecutor's office to increase control over the
expropriation of farmland for construction and other nonagricultural
purposes and to impose severe penalties on violators of the land
protection law.

The land protection measures were not sufficiently effective. The
acreage abandoned in the 1966-70 period was three times larger than the
area abandoned in the preceding five years. In January 1973 an inspector
of the Committee for State Control stated pu