Impacts and causes of land fragmentation, and lessons learned from land consolidation in South Asia

Landholdings and land parcels in South Asia are undergoing fragmentation, thereby accelerating the pace of their degradation and constraining agricultural development. Based on experiences gained in the region and elsewhere, this paper finds the fragmentation of small landholdings and tiny land parcels detrimental to land conservation and economic gain, thereby discouraging farmers from adoption of agricultural innovations. Primarily induced by the dependency of the major proportion of ever growing population on agriculture, the process of land fragmentation has been reinforced by the law of inheritance of paternal property, lack of progressive tax on inherited land, heterogeneous land quality and an underdeveloped land market. South Asian countries have had adopted policies and legal measures for facilitating land consolidation. However, desirable results were not achieved, as such interventions could not address structural causes of the problem. Broad policy and legal measures have been outlined for facilitating land consolidation in a sustainable way.     

Does China’s ‘increasing versus decreasing balance’ land-restructuring policy restructure rural life? Evidence from Dongfan Village,Shaanxi Province

China’s ‘increasing versus decreasing balance’ land-restructuring policy is an innovative, top-down institutional land reform. Using the case study method, this study reviews the policy by examining its restructuring impacts on rural life. By deconstructing the procedures involved in the transfer of land development rights, we clarify that the economic benefits obtained from the trade of land development rights fund the entire project. Thus, the allocation of these economic benefits plays a pivotal role in restructuring rural living, production and ecology. We further analyze the case of Dongfan in Shaanxi Province, and our results show that approximately 60% of the economic benefit was used to demolish and re-construct settlements for peasants, while less than 25% was reserved for the development of rural industries. This distorted benefit allocation stemmed from the local governments’ pursuit of an increased quota for construction land use, which consequently generated weak impacts on restructuring rural life in Dongfan. Although their living conditions have improved, the outflow of peasants persists, thus producing a second round of village hollowing. The results of the policy indicate a need to pay more attention to rural industrial development in future programs and to examine the possibility for more radical land reforms in China, which could serve as a positive reference for village renewal and poverty alleviation in other countries.     

Causal chains,policy trade offs and sustainability: Analysing land (mis)use in seven countries in the South

The need to enhance sustainable development of land use is more urgent than ever; specifically in developing countries where poverty and land degradation are often interlinked. To promote a common understanding of land use problems by experts, stakeholders and decision makers, it is essential to understand the system characteristics, including the complex feedbacks between drivers and impacts. To enhance sustainable development, appropriate policies need to be identified. In this paper, we analysed and compared seven case studies in Kenya, Mali, Tunisia, China, India, Indonesia and Brazil, representing different biophysical and socio-economic conditions and challenges. We analysed Driver Pressure State Impact Response (DPSIR) story lines of the land use problems, policy priorities and value trade-offs as identified by stakeholders and experts in National Policy Forums. Important drivers of land use change impacting main land use problems among the case studies were economic growth, technological development, immigration and agricultural intensification, in addition to existing policies. Of the latter the most important were related to domestic support through various forms of subsidies or access to credit, land tenure polices and liberalization policies. In the policy prioritization, the value trade-offs made by the National Policy Forums emphasize the environment rather than increased economic production. It is recognized that the environment needs to be improved to maintain and improve economic production in the long term, both in agriculture and in other sectors.     

Land reform and land fragmentation in Central and Eastern Europe

It has often been stated that land fragmentation and farm structures characterized by small agricultural holdings and farms divided in a large number of parcels have been the side-effect of land reform in Central and Eastern Europe. This article reports the findings of a study of land reform in 25 countries in the region from 1989 and onwards and provides an overview of applied land reform approaches. With a basis in theory on land fragmentation, the linkage between land reform approaches and land fragmentation is explored. It is discussed in which situations land fragmentation is a barrier for the development of the agricultural and rural sector. The main finding is that land fragmentation is often hampering agricultural and rural development when both land ownership and land use is highly fragmented.     

Effects of land lease policy on changes in land use,mechanization and agricultural pollution

Land fragmentation has restrained the development of Chinese agriculture with the application of agricultural machinery. Meanwhile, agricultural pollution has caused serious problems with development. To address these problems, China's government proposed a new farmland lease policy and built larger farms beginning in 2013. However, changes in land fragmentation may also have unexpected problems for Chinese agriculture. This study investigated the effects of these changes on changes in land use, the application of machinery and agricultural pollution. We analyzed a developed area (in the fields of both agriculture and industry) and studied the decision-making habits of farmers in the area. An agent-based model was proposed with the same decision-making habits as in the real world. The results indicated that land lease increased agricultural profits very little in Jiangsu, China. Meanwhile, the application of land lease policy increased pollution. To alleviate pollution and increase profits, a new policy for large automatic protection machinery (i.e., large spraying machinery) should be introduced by governments simultaneous with land lease policy. Farmers could realize greater profits through the introduction of land lease policy and high-efficiency machinery. The sustainable development of agriculture in Jiangsu requires the integration of these government policies.     

Trade-offs of European agricultural abandonment

Agricultural land abandonment is a policy challenge, especially for areas with unfavorable conditions for agriculture and remote and mountainous areas. Agricultural abandonment is an important land use process in many world regions and one of the dominant land use change processes in Europe. Previous studies have shown that abandonment can have both positive and negative effects on several environmental processes, influenced by location and scale. Preferred policies and management of these areas are debated given concerns for the loss of (traditional) agricultural landscapes and potential impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We present a European-scale impact assessment of the possible effects of agricultural abandonment, based on eight indicators that are on the forefront of the agricultural abandonment debate. Using a multi-scale modelling approach, we expect between 71.277 and 211.814 km² of agricultural abandonment in 2040. Impacts on the indicators and trade-offs between the impacts are spatially variable. A typology of typical trade-off bundles at a 1 km² resolution resulted in four typical trade-off clusters. All clusters identified are characterized by a loss of agriculture-related values, such as agro-biodiversity and cultural heritage. For two clusters, this was accompanied by positive effects on indicators such as carbon sequestration, nature recreation and mammal habitat suitability. Overall, our results indicate that location and scale are key to assess the trade-offs originating from agricultural abandonment in Europe. Identification of typical trade-offs bundles can help to distinguish potential desirable outcomes of agricultural abandonment and assist in targeting measures to areas that face similar management challenges.     

岭南农业开发区农业发展亟待解决的几个问题

论述大兴安岭岭南农业开发区农业经济发展中存在耕地权属问题,管理问题及政策制度问题。提出稳定政策、和谐发展是解决岭南开发区权属问题的关键。要从改革管理体制,理顺管理关系入手,实施统一管理、统一收费、统一服务。同时,制定相适应的政策,出台规章制度,规范岭南开发区农业的发展。并且要借鉴成功经验,适时发展岭南开发区的农业保险。解决好这些问题,岭南农业开发区将步入健康、和谐、快速发展的轨道。     

Exploring the effect of land use on ecosystem services: The distributive issues

The current debate of ecosystem services has focused more on monetary valuation methods and payments for environmental services (PES) then on the classic economic analysis (i.e. assumptions regarding: sustainability, justice and efficiency). This paper examines, taking into consideration ecosystem services, income distribution from different land uses to stakeholders. We study the Portuguese common land ecosystem, which is characterized as having a wide range of ecosystem services. Allowing that all the benefits can be translated into economic value, we estimated the total economic value (TEV) associated with these territories on 5 different land use situations: forest, shrubland, water bodies, mountain agriculture and other uses, and analyzed the current institutional arrangements around these territories. We found that the distribution of the benefits of different land uses is relatively inequality. The results showed that the contemporary institutional arrangements of wealth distribution ensure a relatively fair distribution insider of system; however this institutional arrangement is unable to ensure equitable distribution of wealth by external stakeholders. We can conclude that different types of land use provide a very asymmetric distribution of income by different groups of humans: land owners; citizens of a country, and residents of Earth.     

Agricultural reforms in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union Status and perspectives⋆

The current status of the agricultural sector in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is described, in the context of reforms undertaken during the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market‐based one. Sectoral performance is analyzed, focussing especially on general trends in production, and emerging trading patterns. Five critical basic elements of reform are described, and a table is presented rating each country in the study on progress in completing each type of reform. Overall conclusions are presented, indicating that in each basic element of reform, the CEE countries have achieved considerably more success than those of the CIS. The paper concludes with a discussion of prospects for development in the region.     

Forest and agricultural land change in the Carpathian region—A meta-analysis of long-term patterns and drivers of change

Humans have altered land cover for centuries, and land-cover change is a main component of global change. Land use transition trajectories, such as the forest transition theory (i.e. switch from deforestation to stable or increasing forest cover), relate long term changes in land use to gradual changes in underlying drivers, such as economic development, demographic change, and urbanization. However, because only few studies examined land change over centuries, it is not clear how land cover changes during very long time-periods which are punctuated by shifts in socio-economics and policies, such as wars. Our goal here was to examine broad land change patterns and processes, and their main driving forces in Central and Eastern Europe during distinct periods of the past 250 years. We conducted a meta-analysis of 66 publications describing 102 case study locations and quantified the main forest and agricultural changes in the Carpathian region since the 18th century. These studies captured gradual changes since the peak of the Austro-Hungarian Empire up to the accession to the European Union of most of the formerly socialist countries in the study region. Agricultural land-use increased during the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 70% of the case studies, but dropped sharply during and especially after the collapse of the Socialism (over 70% of the cases). The highest rates of abandonment occurred between 1990 and 2000. The Carpathian region experienced forest transition during the Interwar period (93% of the cases), and the forest expansion trend persisted after the collapse of Socialism (70% of the cases). In terms of the drivers, institutional and economic factors were most influential in shaping deforestation and agricultural expansion, while socio-demographics and institutional shifts were the key drivers of land abandonment. Our study highlights the drastic effects that socio-economic and institutional changes can have on land-use and land-cover change, and the value of longitudinal studies of land change to uncover these effects.     

Agriculture and land use: Demand for and supply of agricultural commodities,characteristics of the farming and food industries,and implications for land use in the UK

Agriculture is the largest type of land use in the UK, accounting for about 77 per cent of the total area, compared with an average 50 per cent for the EU27. But in common with most high-income countries, agriculture's contribution to UK GDP and employment is low, at about 0.5 and 1.8 per cent, respectively, although the regional importance of the sector (and its associated food and farming industries) varies considerably.Of the 17.5 million ha used for agriculture, about 28 per cent is allocated to crops, and 67 per cent is grassland. The grassland includes 4.4 million ha of sole-owned rough grazing and 1.1 million ha of common land in mainly upland “disadvantaged areas,” primarily used for beef and sheep production. This has a major influence on land use, especially in the northern and western parts of the UK.From the 1930s until the mid-1980s, UK policy promoted increases in agricultural productivity to feed the nation from its own resources. An array of income and production support measures encouraged intensive farming, including a relative switch to arable farming in eastern areas. Since the early-1990s, policies have sought simultaneously to make UK agriculture internationally competitive and environmentally benign. These policies, evident in the Agenda 2000 Reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy, point the way forward for the future. It is likely that a greater distinction will emerge between policies to protect natural resources and enhance the flow of non-market ecosystem services from rural land, and agriculture and food policies intended to encourage an appropriate proportion of national food requirements to be met from domestic sources.It seems likely that over the next 50 years, the UK's land area will be required to deliver an increasingly diverse range of private and public goods to meet growing human needs and aspirations. This will require a balance of policy-driven goals and market forces. It will also need a much improved understanding of the trade-offs between food production and environmental goals and of the institutional arrangements required to achieve a balance of economic, social and environmental outcomes.     

台湾农地保护政策的演变及对大陆的启示

台湾50多年来的农业发展过程中进行过三次农地改革,每一次农地制度改革对台湾的农业、工业乃至整个社会都产生了十分重要的作用,形成了独特的"台湾模式"。台湾农地改革对大陆的启示是:土他改革是农业生产的推动力,不同的农业发展阶段需采取不同的农地保护政策,农地政策对农地数量的变化具有重要影响,土地改革需有详尽的法律规定作基础。大陆的农地保护应从数量、质量、生态三方面进行,建立产权明晰的土地政策,制定并颁布基本农田保护法规,避免农地非农化的随意性,优化土地利用结构提高农地利用效益。     

Changing land use intensity in Europe – Recent processes in selected case studies

In recent decades the intensification of agricultural production in many European countries has been one of the key components of land-use change. The impact of agricultural intensification varies according to national and local contexts and a greater understanding of the drivers of intensification will help to mitigate against its negative impacts and harness potential benefits. This paper analyses changes in land use intensity in six case studies in Europe. A total of 437 landowners were interviewed and their responses were analysed in relation to changes in land use intensity and agricultural production between 2001 and 2011. In the case studies in Western and Eastern Europe we observed stabilisation during the last decade, and no clear tendency of increase or decrease of land use intensity. The use of fertilizers and pesticides seems to have decreased in our cases in Western Europe, which is contrary to trends in Eastern Europe. Agricultural production remained stable in almost all cases, except for an increase in Austria and Romania which may indicate that the farming efficiency has increased. A statistical analysis showed a division between study areas in Romania and Austria (increasing land use intensity) versus those in the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece (decreasing). In the Mediterranean cases we observe a process where agriculture is becoming increasingly marginalised, at the same time as changes in function with regard to urbanisation and recreational land uses have taken place. Logistic regression highlighted the importance of farm size and farmer type in understanding changes in land use intensity. The dominant pattern of stabilisation which has occurred over the past 10 years may also partly be a result of effective EU and national environmental and agricultural policies, which are increasingly concerned with improving environmental conditions in rural areas.     

Impact and implications of price policy and land degradation on agricultural growth in developing countries

In many developing countries, a high proportion of the population resides and works in rural areas. Agriculture is the dominant sector in rural areas and has the greatest concentration of poverty: landless workers, small tenant farmers, and small farm owners. Thus, any development strategy that is directed towards increasing employment and alleviating a country's hunger must concentrate on sustainable agricultural growth. Historically, economic development in most countries has been based on exploitation of natural resources, particularly land resources. Soil erosion and land degradation have been serious worldwide. Due to reasons such as high population pressure on land and limited fossil energy supplies, land degradation is generally more serious in the developing world. Empirical studies show that soil erosion and degradation of agricultural land not only decrease the land productivity but they can also result in major downstream or off-site damage which may be several times that of on-site damage. In promoting industrialization, governments of many developing countries adopt a package of price and other policies that reduce agricultural production incentives and encourage a flow of resources out of agriculture. Increasing evidence shows that these policies cause a substantial efficiency or social welfare loss, and a great loss in foreign exchange earnings. In addition, a World Bank study on the effect of price distortions on economic growth rates concluded that neither rich resource endowments, nor a high stage of economic development, nor privatization are able to make up the adverse effects caused by high price distortions. This analysis is primarily concerned with identifying the factors that determine the agricultural production growth rate and in testing the effects these factors have on agricultural growth in developing countries. Specifically, this study involves statistical estimation of an aggregate agricultural growth function based on cross-country data for 28 developing countries. Special attention is devoted to land degradation and agricultural pricing policy, and to the policy implications resulting from the effects these variables have on agricultural and food production growth. The overall results of this study show that price distortions in the economy and land degradation had statistically significant negative impacts while the change in arable and permanent land was positively related to the growth of agricultural production and food production in 28 developing countries from 1971 to 1980. These results emphasize the importance of ‘getting prices right’ and implementation of sustainable land and water management practices if future growth in food and agricultural output is to be realized and sustained in developing countries.     

Towards sustainable rural development in Central and Eastern Europe: Applying land consolidation

Over the past twenty years, social and economic decline in rural areas has intensified in the Central and Eastern European countries. A precondition for the reversal of this decline is the implementation of new policies in relation to the fundamentals of land ownership and management. In addition to addressing the problems of land ownership fragmentation, these should include measures to improve agricultural production and employment, taxation policy, and legislation to protect land ownership rights, within the context of acknowledging environmental and sustainability considerations. In Europe, the requirement for readjusting unfavourable land fragmentation and promoting the appropriate use of land combining with positive environmental solutions is expected to create new sustainable land management systems. The consolidation of land ownerships may be an effective and active land management instrument which not only addresses the problems of land fragmentation, but also, if applied sensitively, may be an instrument for delivering sustainable rural development in a wider context. The aim of this research is to investigate land consolidation as an essential tool to create sustainable rural areas in Lithuania.     

Rural land system reforms in China: History,issues, measures and prospects

Land system reform (LSR) helps to protect farmers' rights and interests and national food security. China is a country dominated by agriculture but insufficient arable land resources. The contradiction between man and land is prominent. To alleviate the man-land contradiction, the Chinese government has carried out a series of LSRs, especially in the past half century. Extensive and in-depth studies have been done on the process and stage characteristics of China's LSRs, but the systematic analysis on the necessity, problems and key measures to deepen the land system reform is still insufficient. Based on a systematic review of the history of the evolution of China's LSRs, this study firstly analyzed the key issues and new challenges existing in or arising from China's land system, then put forward the necessity of deepening the reform of land system, and discussed specific measures taken to deepen the reform of land system in China at present and finally pointed out the future LSR’s direction. The results show that China's rural LSR has gone through five stages in general since 1949. The key problems existing or arising from the current land system in China include unclear subject of land property right, serious inefficient utilization of land resources, rapid farmland conversion and conflict between farmers’ interests and land system. The dual land system in urban and rural areas has severely restricted the integration of social and economic development in this country. The Chinese government is actively promoting the reforms of rural agricultural land, collective operating construction land and homestead to further remove the dual institutional barriers that hinder the establishment of an integrated land trading market. The vision is good, but there is still a long way to go for China's LSR. The direction of China's rural LSR is to make the property rights relationship clearer, the farmland rights more complete, the transfer transactions more market-oriented and the property rights’ protection more equal. Deepening the rural LSRs is helpful to improve the efficiency of land resource utilization, safeguard the rights and interests of farmers, promote the coordination of human-land relationship, and inject new vitality and momentum into rural revitalization. Cooperative promotion of land resource capitalization reform and household registration system reform is the key area of land system reform in China in the future.     

Long run agricultural land expansion,booms and busts

Agricultural land expansion is a prominent feature in today’s developing countries. It is associated with a structural pattern of land use in many remote land-abundant regions where large-scale commercial primary product activities coexist with increased concentration of smallholders in more marginal areas. The result may be boom-bust cycles of development. If these phenomena are widespread across developing countries, then long-run expansion of agricultural land could be associated with lower levels of real income per capita, which may also fluctuate with prolonged expansion. A panel analysis conducted over 1961–2015 for 98 developing economies fails to reject this hypothesis. Policies should aim to decouple socio-economic gains through agricultural development from continued land expansion, and greater investments are needed to support smallholder agriculture, land distribution and livelihoods in these areas.     

“Money can’t buy me land”: Foreign land ownership regime and public opinion in a transition society

In recent years, as part of the broader policies of economic liberalization, the sale of agricultural land to foreign citizens has attracted considerable political, social and media attention in transition societies. The regime of land ownership in Georgia has evolved from the complete restriction of foreign acquisition in the beginning of the 1990s, to the unrestricted sale of land to foreign citizens from 2010 onwards. An analysis of newly-available data from International Social Survey Programme’s (ISSP) National Identity module suggests that respondents in Georgia, along with Russia, hold the most negative attitudes toward selling land to foreigners compared to other countries. I hypothesize that this is the result of a confluence of factors such as the communist legacy, historical memory, rural nationalism, agricultural underdevelopment and inequality. The quantitative part of this article tests socio-demographic, geographic, ideological, and identity-based explanations of within-country variation in attitudes toward the purchase of land by foreigners. The results suggest that socio-demographic and geographic variables such as respondents’ age and regional belonging explain some variance in the dependent variable, but that the major effects stem from individuals’ perceptions of economic protectionism, xenophobia, and ethnic national identity.     

中国农村土地要素市场化改革探源

基于政府与市场关系,运用产权理论与新结构经济学理论,探讨农村土地要素市场化的政策史流变、经济学意涵和制度性创新。研究表明,第一,改革开放以来市场在土地资源配置中的作用经历了由辅助性到基础性再到决定性的历史转变,农村土地要素市场化也经历了改革探索期、改革发展期与改革深化期。第二,土地要素市场化的经济学本质是土地转让权的赋予,赋予农户充分、完整且有保障的土地转让权具有理论必要性和现实必然性。第三,未来的农村土地要素市场化改革,一方面要培育有效市场,以土地产权制度改革为主线,做好产权界定、产权配置和产权保护工作;另一方面要建设有为政府,以土地管理制度改革为依托,做好数量管控、用途管制和市场监管工作。