The President, in order to combat land degradation in the national territory and mitigate its negative consequences, prevent desertification and drought in the regions, preserve biodiversity, preserve and increase soil fertility, restore degraded lands, achieve sustainable development of regions based on the widespread use of advanced scientific developments and innovations in this field decrees to assign the following tasks to the Ministry of Agriculture: (a) maintaining a unified state policy in the field of combating land degradation processes; (b) development of state programs and long-term strategies to combat land degradation processes, as well as coordination of the activities of ministries and departments involved in their implementation; (e) collection, analysis, processing and provision of open access to information from ministries and departments on the current state and measures taken to combat land degradation, desertification and drought within a single electronic resource (database); (f) monitoring land degradation and desertification, including measures for restoration, reclamation and land reclamation, rotation of pastures, their protection and phytomelioration, crop rotation processes, creation of forest belts and protective forest plantations through the use of modern technologies (laboratories, drones, remote sensing and others) in accordance with uniform national and international indicators and criteria; (g) carrying out soil, agrochemical, geobotanical research, land inventory, aerospace surveys, topographic-geodetic, cartographic work; (h) coordination of scientific and practical activities, establishing effective cooperation with international and regional organizations; (i) organizing and conducting training courses on preventing and combating land degradation processes; (j) development of scientifically based recommendations to prevent land degradation processes; and (k) creation of cartographic materials on salinity and ecological condition (Soil Quality Index) of the soil, geobotanical and agrochemical maps.