PR - MULTIFUNCTIONAL LAND CONSOLIDATION EVALUATION FROM AN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The paper presents preliminary results form a real-life project in which five economic services are pursued through multifunctional land consolidation processes: Farm economics; Biodiversity; Clean water; Recreational opportunities; and Development of rural communities. The analysis is based on the first results from three Danish case studies where land consolidation is used to facilitate multifunctional land consolidation. We find that the multifunctional goals are generally aligned with agricultural economics goals and the optimal consolidation of land plots are not fundamentally differing between economic services with different goals. The fundamental benefit from this approach is local ownership to process and results due to the collective policy formulation. One more specific lesson learned is though, that access to recreational activities such as hunting and horseback riding, which is tied to the ownership of land, may indeed represent significant value to the landowner and this can highly influence the scale and scope of the consolidation.

Keywords: Land consolidation, Collective policy formation, Denmark