©FAO/Gagik Harutyunyan

Yerevan, Armenia - Today, Vahan Qerobyan, Minister of Economy, Artak Kamalyan, Minister for Industry and Agriculture of the Eurasion Economic Commission and Raimund Jehle, FAO Representative in Armenia and a group of  experts held a virtual meeting to discuss solutions to improved land legislation and addressing land abandonment in Armenia.

Land fragmentation and small average farm sizes are the key constraints hampering agricultural transformation that are the main contributors to land abandonment, causing among other factors low productivity and competitiveness in the global, regional and national markets.

Participants of the virtual meeting looked at the issue of abandonmed agricultural land, its main drivers, and other present processes in rural areas, including the aging population, migration, problems with land ownership documentation and inheritance. To provide information from the ground, FAO project staff gave an update on the progress of the on-going technical assistance project and planned activities for the project's remaining period.

Minister Qerobyan emphasized the importance of finding a feasible solution to land abandonment to unlock agriculture’s potential and to attract investments to agriculture and land.   

According to FAO’s proposal, a new land agency should be established with a wide set of responsibilities and land management instruments such as mediation of lease, land banking, and land consolidation.

"It is important that the draft land law, prepared by the Ministry and the FAO expert teams, will be approved soon as it is a key pillar of improving land management" said Raimund Jehle, FAO Representative in Armenia.  

The Ministry of Economy and FAO are working together to further develop a joint policy vision and a solution to address the problem of land abandonment in a broader context of improved farm structures and by focusing on smallholders and family farms as the main target and beneficiary group.

The FAO technical assistance project is part of the broader land reform effort aiming to bring more than one-third of agricultural land back into production and strengthen land management regulations and practices. Preparation of the reform package for the legislators and testing the feasibility of the proposed solutions on a pilot basis continues.

The “Establishment of land management instruments and institutional framework to address land abandonment” technical support project, with a total budget of USD 279,000 will facilitate the land market of both use and ownership rights in order to reduce the amount of abandoned agricultural land and improve land utilization and competitiveness of farms; provide direct and targeted interventions into the landownership market to bring the abandoned land back into agricultural production; regulate and supervise agricultural land market.

The joint expert team of FAO and the Ministry of Economy has prepared a draft law, “Ensuring effective use of agricultural land,” which was presented to the Legal Working Group of the Ministry of Economy for review and comments.