The legal regime for the use of land on the territory of the Russian Federation is determined by its belonging to the category of land and the established type of permitted use. The article discusses the process of reforming land relations in the transition from land categories to territorial zones. The author substantiates the idea to return to the draft law the previously accepted concepts of especially valuable agricultural lands, since these lands are distinguished by a special target specialization. As a research task, the stages of reforming the legal framework in the field of land relations in the Russian Federation were analyzed in order to develop sequences of activities in the implementation of the draft law on the transition from land categories to territorial zoning.