The reform of the 90s led to the elimination of states monopoly of landownership and to the privatization of most agricultural lands. Within the small auxiliary sector of agricultural land the turnover arose in the early reform. But in the large agro-industrial sector, the turnover of lands received the necessary legal regulation only in 2003 (more than 10 years later than the mass privatization of these lands). For this type of turnover, a significant part of the regulatory mechanisms was borrowed from foreign experience, because the domestic experience was absent.

Any activities aimed at rural area development should not disregard the inhabitants who are "the tools" that implement given mechanisms. To a large extent, the effectiveness of social activities is determined by the participants’ expectations towards the projects and their knowledge of the subject. Land consolidation projects are the ideal tools for rural development. Land consolidation may be described as the planned readjustment of land ownership patterns with the aim of creating larger and more rational land holdings.

Public preferences for nonmarket services of preserved land in Delaware are measured using two survey techniques. The results of a conjoint experiment, using a sample of 199 Delawareans, suggest that the environmental and agricultural attributes of preserved land are most important to the residents. The conjoint results also suggest that these services are of substantial value to Delawareans; at the margin, at least, agricultural and environmental preserved land provide net benefits to the public.

This report presents the results of a survey of Delaware agricultural landowners about their characteristics, opinions, and behavior regarding participation in the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Program, specifically the PACE and Ag Dist programs. The results demonstrate that participants tend to:
- Own larger farms
- Be more likely to raise corn, soybeans, and vegetables
- Have more decision makers
- Be much more likely to be full-time operators
- Be more likely to value working outdoors

Nature reserve planning models to maximize species protection are typically formulated for a single period using certain data. In practice, however, parcels must be acquired over time. The status of a parcel may change due to conversion to alternate land use. Populations of species to be protected may change, as well. A two-stage stochastic program that maximizes expected species protection with annual budget constraints is proposed where parcels available for set aside have associated probabilities of being available for acquisition and species coverage.

This study summarizes an analysis of uniform, topographical and other site-specific soil fertility testing procedures based on observations of various crops at various locations in North Dakota and one location in Minnesota for 2001 through 2004. Results showed little difference in economic returns among the soil fertility testing methods by crop or location.

While agricultural land preservation programs seek to maximize number of acres, to preserve productive farms, to preserve contiguous farms, and to preserve threatened farms, they are often evaluated solely on the number of acres preserved. Using a Farrell efficiency analysis, preserved parcels in four Maryland counties were evaluated for all four goals. Comparisons are made between program Econometric analysis used these efficiency measures as dependent variables. Parcel size and productive farms were the most frequently used criteria to determine efficiency.

Land reform was launched in the Republic of Georgia in 1992, about a year after the
country gained its independence from the Soviet Union. While an impressive land
individualization process has been in effect since then, the pace and the performance of
this process are far from satisfactory. This is due to a combination of institutional and
economic constraints. We use comparable survey data from 1996 and 2003 and show
that the land reform has been progressing mainly through land leasing. This allows