According to the annual report of Huaphan Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Office (PAFO) (1999), despite land allocation, some villages are still practising shifting cultivation. To address this problem many decrees and regulations on land and land use have been developed and declared. The land allocation (LA) programme is one of these initiatives. So far, no effort has been made to evaluate whether the LA programme could facilitate change in land use and land management. The major objective of this study was to assess the impact of the LA programme on land use and land management.

Basing on a sample of Polish rural households present paper analyses how different households' and country-specific characteristics affect farmers' decision about renting additional parcel in. An attempt is made to see if local rental markets still have potential that could be further exploited. Obtained results indicate that despite facing various difficulties rental markets succeed in transferring land to farmers with higher skills and better relative inputs' endowments.

EURURALIS is developed for policy makers dealing with the future of agriculture and other land use in the enlarged Europe of 25 member states. Expecting that major developments affect the rural areas in Europe pro-active rural policy has to be informed timely and in a targeted and crispy way.