Effects of land consolidation in Southern Poland

Abstract

Motives: The fragmentation of land and the distribution of plots in rural areas negatively affects the profitability and efficiency of agricultural production. Land consolidation is an activity that facilitates the improvement of the spatial structure and at the same time contributes to the sustainable development of rural areas. European Union (EU) funding helps to improve, among others the area structure of agricultural land in the EU countries. Aim: From these premises, the purpose of the work results, which is the assessment of the effects of the performed consolidation of land with EU funding. The detailed analysis covered 16 precincts from the Podkarpackie voivodeship and 3 precincts from the Świętokrzyskie voivodeship. The assessment of the consolidation of land was made in 19 consolidated objects in the years 2007-2020. In practice, there is a problem of how to demonstrate the effects of land consolidation? This article proposes to present the four most important effects of land consolidation in the form of the following coefficients: W1 (coefficient of reducing the number of plots as a result of consolidation), W2 (coefficient of increasing the average plot area in the consolidation facility), W3 (coefficient of reducing the number of plots in an individual farm as a result of consolidation), W4 (index of road network density in merged area) are a reliable image of the results of the land consolidation performed in the studied area. Results: The results were obtained. Index W1 in the examined objects indicated the result of 34.0% for the Podkarpackie voivodeship, and 28.8% for the Świętokrzyskie. Index W2 in the Podkarpackie voivodeship is 27.0%, and in the Świętokrzyskie it is higher and amounts to 29.7%. Index W3 which amounts to 39.4% of the average number of plots in a farm in the Podkarpackie voivodeship and much higher, amounting to 46.6% in the Świętokrzyskie. Index W4 for the Podkarpackie voivodeship is + 14.7%. However, for the Świętokrzyskie it is only + 3.7%. Summing up, the study analyzed four indicators showing the effects of land consolidation in southern Poland. The results obtained for these two voivodeships were similar. However, unsatisfactory in terms of the effects of land consolidation.