The aim of land consolidation projects is to improve the competitiveness of agriculture.Since land consolidation is subsidised by national and European means, the effectivenessof such measures must be determined. The following paper presents a method whichmakes it possible to calculate the direct economic effects of land consolidation. Thecalculations, considering labour demand, machinery costs and headland effects, compare theeconomic situation before and after land consolidation. The method was applied to four land consolidationprojects in Bavaria.

Rettsutgreiing og bruksordning i reindriftsomrder. En underskelse med henblikk p bruk av jordskiftelovgivningens virkemidler. [Clarifying legal relations and prescribing rules of use in reindeer husbandry areas. A study regarding use of land consolidation procedures].

Ownership of agricultural land is very fragmented in Turkey, as is the case in countries within central Europe. This prevents agricultural efficiency from reaching desired levels. Land consolidation involves redistributing land ownership so that individual farmers own fewer, larger, more compact and more contiguous land parcels. In Turkey, generally voluntary land consolidation projects are performed, while some financial limitations and political conditions prevent land consolidation reach to its desired level.

Soil erosion leads to important environmental problems (e.g. muddy floods, reservoir sedimentation) in cultivated areas of the European loess belt. This study aimed to determine the impact of rainfall seasonality and land use change on soil erosion over the last 40 years in a 94-ha cultivated catchment of Normandy (France). To this end, scenarios representative of the different land use conditions were simulated using the STREAM expert-based erosion model. A 13 years long sequence of rainfall events was run with this model.

Expected achievement of land consolidation depends on the priority given to the protection of water, soil and air quality which are the elements of rural environmental balance. Today, many of researches have carried out to determine the effects of land consolidation on the local hydrology and agricultural productivity.

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.

The experience and knowledge collected during the implementation of land consolidation in the district of Usti nad Orlici (Czech Republic) provides the first opportunity to describe and evaluate the impact of specific conditions associated with the design and implementation of land consolidation in the different morphological, soil and climatic areas.

Implementing the land reform, territories of farms were quite often formed of several - up to 20 - land plots, frequently with disadvantageous borders. With reorganization of production of the farms, rural development and activities of land market, importance and tasks of rational territory organization will grow. Besides, it can be forecasted that, as a result of land rent and further buy-sell and other transactions, many new farmland properties and land uses are going to appear which might not correspond to the requirements of rational territory organization.

Farmland consolidation is the act of consolidating a series of fragmented and irregular farmland plots to enlarge plot their size and support sufficient irrigation. Farmland consolidation also combines and groups the proprietor’s farmland into one area by administrative give-and-take as well as division-and-junction of their land. Moreover, it also includes the rearrangement of farmland, which is small or lacks sufficient infrastructure due to farmland consolidation or earthwork waterways projects that were done in the past.

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 dit onderzoek zijn de kosten en baten en de effectiviteit op duurzaam bodemgebruik beoordeeld van vijf bedrijfsmaatregelen: aanpassing van vruchtwisseling, preventie van bodemverdichting, optimalisering van ontwatering en flexibel peilbeheer, grondruil en landhuur/-verhuur en omzanden en diepploegen. De effecten op duurzaam bodemgebruik zijn beoordeeld op de aspecten organische stof, bodemstructuur, erosiegevoeligheid en bodemgezondheid. Verruiming van vruchtwisseling met meer maaivruchten en minder rooivruchten gaat meestal ten koste van het bedrijfsinkomen.

De gronden in het herverkavelingsgebied Weerijs-Zuid (onderdeel van voormalige ruilverkaveling Rijsbergen) bestaan uit afzettingen die dateren uit het Pleistoceen en het Holoceen. De afzettingen uit het Pleistoceen, die aan of nabij het oppervlak voorkomen, bestaan voornamelijk uit dekzand, lössleem en fluvioperiglaciaal zand. De zanden en de lössleem worden tot de Formatie van Twente gerekend. Langs de Weerijs of Aa en langs de Hazeldonksche Beek komen aan of nabij het oppervlak afzettingen (zand, klei en veen) voor die voor een belangrijk deel in het Holoceen zijn afgezet.