The decrease in population of rural areas, by migration, or through falling birth rates as young people move away. In 2004, Ioffe et al. (AAAG 94, 4) reported that, as a result of farmland abandonment, no fewer than 20 million hectares of arable land were already deserted in European Russia. However, Stockdale (2002) Int. J. Pop. Geog. 8 asserts that the historical trend of rural depopulation is being replaced by a repopulation of the countryside.