The aim of this article is to distinguish strengths and weaknesses of land consolidation process, as well as to find out the opportunities of this process, and the threats which prevent the successful development of land consolidation process. With the purpose to achieve the goal, the SWOT analysis of five land consolidation projects in western Lithuania was carried out.

Paper presented at a Workshop at Universidad Publica de Navarra (Navarre Public University), Pamplona-Iruña (Spain), November 5-7, 2009.

Land acquisitions, either driven by foreign investments or domestic investment needs have continued to polarize opinions. When this research was proposed, it was premised on arguments by scholars Ruth Meinzen-Dick and Helen Markelova, who had analysed agricultural land deals, and argued that there were potentially two schools of thought about foreign acquisitions over agricultural land.

Farmland ownership fragmentation is one of the important drivers of land-use changes. It is a process that in its extreme form can essentially limit land management sustainability. Based on a typology of land degradation and its causes, this process is here classified for the first time as an underlying cause which through tenure insecurity causes land degradation in five types (water erosion, wind erosion, soil compaction, reduction of organic matter, and nutrient depletion).

Medium-scale farms have become a major force in Malawi’s agricultural sector. Malawi’s most recent official agricultural survey indicates that these account for over a quarter of all land under cultivation in Malawi. This study explores the causes and multifaceted consequences of the rising importance of medium-scale farms in Malawi. We identify the characteristics and pathways of entry into farming based on surveys of 300 medium-scale farmers undertaken in 2014 in the districts of Mchinji, Kasungu and Lilongwe.

In Norway land consolidation is organized entirely within the judicial system. This paper describes how land consolidation courts work, and examines mediation activities in the courts. Questionnaires were used to get data on 727 cases in 1996, and in-depth interviews with 23 judges were used to get information on mediation behavior. The results indicate that mediation is a frequent activity. Many cases are settled through mediation rather than by verdicts. Mediation activities vary with case type, complexity, significance and conflict level.

Fragmented small farms in Japan and other high wge rice-based economies in monsoon Asia have become an obstacle to sustainable rural development. This problem has not yet been resolved under private land ownership. This article recommends that based on a mixed economy of private owvership of farmland and public ownership of infrastructure land, dispersed parcels of farms could be consolidated through exchange of private ownership and location into compact land units, which could then be enlarged by individual lease or cooperative/enterprise production. LAND TENURE ; OWNERSHIP ; JAPAN

Since 1991, Moldova has carried out a wide range of radical reforms affecting its social and economic system. The land reform, which was practically completed in 2000, created over 1 million landowners among the rural population. Many of them entrusted their land to managers of newly created corporate farms. Others used their privately owned land to establish independent family farms. The creation of independent family farms (so-called "peasant farms") was one of the primary goals of the land reform. More than 280,000 peasant farms have been created, averaging 1,86 hectares in size.

Adopted about one year after the 1989 Revolution, Land Law (Law 18/1991) represented the starting point of land reform in Romania. As a result of this law implementation, at the beginning of the year 2000 the private sector owned 84% of total agricultural land: 82% of arable land, 74% of land under vineyards, 67% of land under orchards and 87% of land under meadows and pastures.

The article examines productivity and efficiency of Polish individual farms, contributing to the policy debate on excessive fragmentation and the need for land consolidation. Data of a rural household survey conducted in the spring of 2000 show that Polish individual farms in the size range of up to 100 hectares have positive marginal productivity of land and increasing returns to scale. Among the individual farms surveyed, larger farms report higher household incomes from farm and non-farm sources combined.

Recent studies have focused on the 'silent' agricultural revolution that occurred in rural West German society during the postwar period. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new framework by reviewing these recent studies in three research fields: (1) German rural social history, (2) the history of German agricultural policy, and (3) the ecological aspects of the land consolidation program ('Flurbereinigung').

Land consolidations in Slovakia are regarded as an instrument for solution of ownership fragmentation in accordance to rural development. In the introduction of this paper, we describe problems in Slovakia associated with the ownership fragmentation. Country, rural areas were significantly influenced by the period of collectivization. The benefits of land consolidation project are shown in a case study area for Kanianka cadastre. We compare ownership relations before and after the land consolidation.