Study was conducted in north-eastern Latvia (57° 38’ N, 22° 17’ E): in a part of Slitere National Park that was un-managed since year 1923 and affected by large storm in November of 1969. Supervised classification of Corona and Landsat 5 images of the area (in total 1646 ha) from years before and after the storm (1966–2010) were carried out and parameters characterizing the fragmentation calculated for 3 land-cover classes: forest, areas with low woody biomass and non-forest areas.

The following article contains analysis of role played by the Agency of Agricultural Estates (in Polish: Agencja Nieruchomosci Rolnych – ANR) in the process of forming local development in rural areas. The Agency is in possession of the Resources of Agricultural Estates of National Treasury (in Polish: Zasoby Nieruchomosci Rolnych Skarbu Panstwa - ZNRSP). Due to wide-scale possibilities of acting, it has right to influence the estate market, housing economy, and development possibilities of rural municipalities.

Land as a resource of agricultural production is not fully exploited in Latvia, as approximately 400 thousand ha, according to the data in the identification system of agricultural parcels, were undeclared for the Single Area Payment Scheme in 2012 and, of the agricultural area, 10 % was uncultivated and 2% was overgrown. It creates unique opportunities and a potential for enhancing the management and use of land in the future to increase the output of agricultural products.

Land consolidation is a new concept in Latvia, although in other countries of the world it has been known since the end of the 18th century. Land consolidation is implemented to improve the spatial structure of land holdings and agricultural infrastructure and to rationally use natural resources. It is particularly significant in agriculture when establishing farms of optimal size and territorial location. Land fragmentation hinders not only land management but also increases the transport cost.

Middlemen are largely absent from the literature and policymaking on land deals. Based on qualitative evidence from India, this paper shows a highly organised field of aggregators, brokers, touts, musclemen and others permeating the land economy. Biographical accounts provide glimpses of everyday work, career and aspirations. A high-definition narrative of middlemen as middlemen allows a shift away from instrumental analyses of bridges in global capitalist accumulation.

Research Hypothesis: an economically and methodologically justified implementation of land consolidation can improve the spatial structure of agricultural holdings and foster the use of land in Latvia’s rural areas. Research Aim to test the hypothesis: to assess the need for the implementation of land consolidation in Latvia’s rural areas in order to develop a land consolidation conception aimed at improving the spatial structure of agricultural holdings.

The implementation of land reform has influenced the formation of property structure. The main procedures of land reform activities are stated in Estonian legislation. However, the provisions for determining the area and the boundaries for properties to be formed in the course of land reform are stated in legal acts in an unsystematic way. The aim of this study is to systematize the parcel area and the boundaries determination procedures that are used in the course of land reform for property formation.

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.

To support crop-rotation systems using rice, wheat, and soybean in paddy fields, we developed a sowing device that can be attached to a rototiller ; the device cuts small ditches on both sides of groups of rows of plants, while tilling to a depth of approximately 5cm, planting seeds, and compressing the soil around the seeds. This device includes a pressurized roller which compacts the soil with sowing, and we examined the effect of this compaction on germination rate after seeding.

The Land Policy Initiative (LPI) of the African Union, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African development Bank (AfDB) concluded the development of a Framework and Guidelines) on Land Policy in Africa (F&G) to facilitate national land policy development and implementation processes.

Information on ecosystem characteristics
as well as economic statistics is needed to more fully
inform decision makers on the impacts of climate change on
human well-being. Climate change risks involve potentially
large and irreversible as well as highly uncertain impacts
that need to be evaluated with information that complements
cost-benefit analysis. Information on the irreversibility of
impacts also is relevant for evaluating implications for

Economists have either avoided or
struggled with the concept of culture and its role in
economic development. Although a few theoretical works --
and even fewer empirical studies -- have appeared in the
past decades, this paper tries to build on a
multidisciplinary approach to review the evidence on whether
and how culture matters for development. First, the paper
reviews available definitions of culture and illustrates