FAO supports solving the land abandonment issue in Armenia. Workshop participants discuss the possible establishment of land consolidation programme in the country.
An FAO workshop today will discuss the problem of land abandonment and the prospective to introduce a land consolidation instrument and establish a land consolidation programme in Armenia. The event is part of the ENPARD project providing technical support to the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Armenia.
Based on the discussions and findings, FAO was recommended to technically support the preparations for introducing a land consolidation programme for Armenia. Especially, the project should develop and pilot a multi-functional land consolidation approach, which could become a model for further replication.
Similarly to many countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Armenia faces the challenge of small farm sizes and high land fragmentation, originating from the land privatization in the 90s. In the years after the independence, some farms became bigger, yet many others became even smaller – almost 60 percent of farms as of 2014, had less than 1 hectare of agricultural land.
Consequently, the inefficient farm structure led to increase of production costs (production, agricultural machinery and feed costs, loss of time and fuel), ineffective irrigation management, both contributing ultimately to the negative trend of land abandonment.
“The issue of land abandonment is a complex multi-dimensional process with interlinked economic, environmental, social factors causing it,” said Maxim Gorgan, FAO land tenure specialist. “The inability to irrigate (due to infrastructure, economical constrains or for other reasons) is among the main drivers of land abandonment in the country.”
According to census results from 2014, in average, 33 percent of arable land in holdings without legal status and 38 percent of holdings with legal status are abandoned in Armenia.
“The purpose of today’s workshop is to understand the perspectives of introducing a land consolidation instrument in Armenia – a process of improving farm structures through re-location of property and usage rights in coordination with landowners and users,” he said.
The workshop brought together about 30 representatives and specialists from the Ministry of Agriculture, State Committee of Real Estate Cadaster, Agrarian University, extension services, Marz and village administrations.