Between Vietnam’s independence and its reunification in 1975, the country’s socialist land tenure system was underpinned by the principle of “land to the tiller”. During this period, government redistributed land to farmers that was previously owned by landlords. The government’s “egalitarian” approach to land access was central to the mass support that it needed during the Indochinese war.

In many African countries and especially in the highlands of Ethiopia—the investigation site of this paper—agricultural land is highly fragmented. Small and scattered parcels impede a necessary increase in agricultural efficiency. Land consolidation is a proper tool to solve inefficiencies in agricultural production, as it enables consolidating plots based on the consent of landholders. Its major benefits are that individual farms get larger, more compact, contiguous parcels, resulting in lower cultivation efforts.

The use of land consolidation on customary lands has been limited, though land fragmentation persists. Land fragmentation on customary lands has two main causes—the nature of the customary land tenure system, and the somewhat linked agricultural system. Since attempts to increase food productivity on customary lands have involved fertilisation and mechanisation on the small and scattered farmlands, these approaches have fallen short of increasing food productivity.

The Chinese government has pursued rural land consolidation under the Building New Rural Communities (BNRC) initiative. The consolidation projects aim to address the hollowing village problem, improve the living standards of rural dwellers, and promote urban-rural integration. Rural villages with small populations and poor infrastructure are merged into a centralized rural community, and their inhabitants are resettled. The newly vacated buildings are then converted to agriculture land, which allows cities to expand under the “no net loss” land-use policy.

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.

Most transition countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) face enormous challenges in developing a viable land structure, requiring a set of measures which is unprecedented in its scale and intensity to speed up this process. Analysis of policy initiatives in CEE countries illustrates that options for solving fragmentation and small scale of farms have concentrated on particular instruments like land consolidation and land banking.

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.

From 9 to 11 November 2016 the ‘symposium on land consolidation and land readjustment for sustainable development’ was held in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. The symposium was a joint initiative from FIG commissions 7 and 8, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), LANDNET, the Dutch Cadastre, Land Registry and Mapping Agency, and supported by Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) and the World Bank. About 200 participants from 50 countries shared their experiences and knowledge about state of the art practices of land consolidation and land readjustment across the world.

Most countries in Western Europe have a long tradition for implementing land consolidation projects. In Central and Eastern Europe, land reforms from 1990 on in most countries resulted in farm structures characterized by excessive land fragmentation and small average farm sizes. Most CEE countries have introduced land consolidation instruments to address the structural problems. FAO has from 2000 on supported land consolidation in the region.

The Republic of Azerbaijan implemented during the late 1990s a land reform, which distributed the state owned agricultural land to the rural population but also led to excessive land fragmentation and small farm sizes. Agricultural and rural development is high on the political agenda in Azerbaijan and is seen as an important sector to development as part of an overall strategy of reducing dependency on income from oil production.

Land consolidation is a highly effective land management instrument that allows for the improvement of the structure of agricultural holdings and farms in a country, which increases their economic and social efficiency and brings benefits both to right holders as well as to society in general. Since land consolidation gives mobility to land ownership and other land rights, it may also facilitate the allocation of new areas with specific purposes other than agriculture, such as for public infrastructure or nature protection and restoration.

This presentation was given at the Webinar "Land Consolidation Legislation: FAO Legal Guide and Its Application at the Country Level" on 18 June 2020. It sets the scene on the need for land consolidation by explaining the problem it addresses, namely, land fragmentation. The presentation also explores whether land markets can solve the issue of land fragmentation, and can be achieved with land consolidation and who are the beneficiaries.