Shortly after the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was founded in 1945, the organization had started to support member countries addressing structural problems in agriculture with land fragmentation and small holding and farm sizes through the development of land consolidation instruments (Binns, 1950). During the 1950s and 1960s, FAO provided technical assistance to the development of land consolidation in member countries in Europe such as Turkey, Greece, Spain and Cyprus, but also in the Near East and Asia (Meliczek, 1973).

In summary, China presents a particularly intriguing case for the study of land system dynamics with its spatial patterns of cropland and crops, crop structure and diversity, land transfer and consolidation, and land use intensity changes against the backdrop of its rapid socio-economic transformation, globalization, and environmental challenges. Moreover, after 40 years since the commencement of China’s Economic Reform and the de-collectivization of agriculture, it is a good time to review and reflect how China’s agricultural land systems have been transformed.

In January 2019, Uzbekistan started a new farm restructuring1. It is said to seek to optimize the use of farmland by increasing the size of farms producing wheat and cotton, reallocating land to more efficient farmers and even clusters, and improving crop rotation options. This is not the first time that this kind of farm restructuring in Uzbekistan takes place. The country has gone through several waves of farm restructuring and land reallocations. Both these processes were administratively managed, with little reference to market or income generation opportunities.

The current state of agricultural production space is the outcome of centuries of human activity, as conditioned by socio-economic, legal, and political factors. The characteristic features of the spatial layout of land, which has been shaped in this historical process in the rural areas of southern and south-eastern Poland, are farms divided into a large number of parcels, lack of access to parcels, irregular shapes of parcels, and their scattering in space.

Agricultural transport roads play an important role not only from the point of view of individual farm holdings, but also the general development of rural areas. Roads constitute an element of the technical infrastructure indispensable for communication and transport; they play a role in shaping the rural landscape, and the routes they follow affect the forms and size of agricultural land and forest areas found within the area covered by a given road system. The existing public road network does not always provide access to all fields.

Land consolidation and land exchange are two important measures that can be used to improve the spatial structure of farm holdings. Unfortunately, land cannot be consolidated and exchanged in all villages of a given area simultaneously, due to economic, technical, and social considerations. Instead, an analysis has to be carried out, which allows one to rank the villages with regard to how urgently they need consolidation and exchange of land.

Soil quality is one of the most important factors determining the potential for obtaining a high profit from farming. The agricultural quality of soils is described by soil quality classes, and the suitability of soils for growing particular plants or plant communities is described in terms of soil-agricultural complexes. A unified soil classification has been developed for the entire area of Poland, which takes into account the morphological features and physical properties of Polish soils.

The spatial structure of rural areas in eastern Poland is characterized by large fragmentation of privately owned farmland, as well as the scattering of parcels across villages and beyond their boundaries. An important defect is also the unfavourable shape of land parcels, which hampers and sometimes even makes impossible rational management of land in a given area. Shape analysis has been the focus of numerous publications in fields such as geography and ecology, and, more recently, also geodesy.

Agriculture in Poland varies from region to region in terms of the level of farming culture and intensity of production. The majority of holdings are family farms, which use extensive farming practices and which are geared towards multidirectional production. They are characterized by low product marketability. Small farms with an area of 1-5 ha prevail. The largest fragmentation of individual farms is observed in the southern and south-eastern parts of the country. A more favourable agrarian structure is found in northern Poland.

The Gully Land Consolidation Project (GLCP) was launched to create more arable land by excavating soil from the slopes on both sides of gullies, combined with simultaneous comprehensive gully prevention and control measures. The purpose of the GLCP is to increase crop production and reduce soil erosion to achieve ecological and agricultural sustainability.

Agriculture is one of the driving forces that shaped the image of Republic of

This article presents a synthesis of analysis of how to use the most valuable natural