Land Use Policy 57 (2016) 694–701

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Land Use Policy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

Classification of farmland ownership fragmentation as a cause of land

degradation: A review on typology, consequences, and remedies
Petr Sklenicka ∗
Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Prague 165 21, Czech Republic

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Farmland ownership fragmentation is one of the important drivers of land-use changes. It is a process
Received 22 January 2016 that in its extreme form can essentially limit land management sustainability. Based on a typology of
Received in revised form 19 June 2016 land degradation and its causes, this process is here classified for the first time as an underlying cause
Accepted 24 June 2016
which through tenure insecurity causes land degradation in five types (water erosion, wind erosion, soil
Available online 6 July 2016
compaction, reduction of organic matter, and nutrient depletion). A review of relevant literature enables
the further presentation of a list of 21 types of land degradation and another extensive list of the 37 most
Keywords:
common causes of land degradation. This work further presents an overview of harmful consequences of
Land tenure
Sustainable land use
high farmland ownership fragmentation, and possibilities for remedying the effects. These possibilities
Land degradation typology consist of eliminating or mitigating those causes accelerating the fragmentation process, defragmenting
Land market current land ownership, and remedying the effects brought by this process.
Land consolidation © 2016 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
There is no definitive list of land degradation (LD) types or
causes, and it is very possible that there never will be. To date, the
list of types is dominated by processes reflecting the degradation of
all physical, chemical, and biological properties of ecosystem sub-
components. Similarly incomplete is the list of the causes of LD,
which is, in contrast, dominated by, in addition to natural causes,
items of a socioeconomic character that have the end result of
reducing the primary production services of ecosystems. In this
regard, this work offers the most detailed overview to date of LD
types and causes.
This study focuses on a process with the end result of LD that has
not yet been described in sufficient detail, namely farmland owner-
ship fragmentation. A review of the literature enables a description
of the negative effects of this phenomenon on agricultural land use
as well as arguments supporting the conclusion that high farm-
land ownership fragmentation is a cause of LD. The work goes on
to describe methods for mitigating the causes and negative conse-
quences of this process.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces various
definitions of LD and discusses their consequences for the classi-
∗ Corresponding author. Permanent address: Czech University of Life Sciences
Prague, Faculty of Environmental Sciences Kamycka 129, Prague, 165 21, Czech
Republic.
E-mail address: sklenicka@fzp.czu.cz
fication of LD types (Section 2.1) and causes (Section 2.2). Section
3 outlines the farmland ownership fragmentation issue, classifying
this phenomenon as an underlying cause of LD (Section 3.1) and
describing its possible remedies (Section 3.2). The conclusions of
this review are presented in Section 4.
2. Land degradation
Lists of various LD types differ depending on the author, the fur-
ther use for the typology, and primarily the definition of this term. It
can generally be said that there is presently no universal agreement
on a single definition. The term itself was coined quite recently,
and as of 1994 did not even exist as an independent category in the
U.S. Library of Congress Classification (Johnson and Lewis, 2007).
Differences in currently used definitions consist primarily in two
main issues. The first is broad interpretations of the term “land”
from the all-encompassing (umbrella) term embracing degrada-
tion of all elements of the environment, including their interactions
(Stocking and Murnaghan, 2001), through the single-purpose or
absolute limitation of the topic within “soil degradation” (Oldeman,
1994), to the entirely inappropriate simplification of the problem in
the interest of popularization, such as when Lomborg (2001) used
the term LD exclusively for soil erosion. The second essential differ-
ence arises from whether the definition covers natural processes as
causes of LD. In this area, authors are divided into two groups, with
one considering LD as a phenomenon or process that arises only as
a result of human activities (e.g., Norbu et al., 2003; Johnson and

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2016.06.032
0264-8377/© 2016 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
 P. Sklenicka / Land Use Policy 57 (2016) 694–701
Lewis, 2007), while the other, larger group expands the definition
to include among causes such natural processes as rainfall, wind,
temperature, and earthquakes under conditions without human
influence (e.g., Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987; Sarukhán et al., 2005;
Nachtergaele et al., 2011; Nkonya et al., 2011). In addition to these
two main areas within which the definition of LD diverges, there are
a number of other differences affecting the form of the definition
and therefore the typology of LD. These include such differences as
whether the effects of degradation are understood exclusively in
relation to humans or at a general level, and also whether degrada-
tion is expressed only as reductions in primary production or in a
much broader sense to include such measures as biodiversity indi-
cators. Moreover, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) had emphasized the
socioeconomic dimension in stating that LD decreases the yields of
labor and capital inputs into production. However, these authors
did not offer any corresponding socioeconomic LD type.
This review will employ a concise but substantively broad def-
inition thoughtfully compiled from several sources (Blaikie and
Brookfield, 1987; Sarukhán et al., 2005; Nkonya et al., 2011): “land
degradation is the reduction or loss of natural beneficial goods and
services, notably primary production services, derived from terres-
trial ecosystems”. This results in a definition embracing both human
and natural causes and emphasizing primary production services
but considering them within the context of all components of the
land (soil, water, vegetation, and other components of the ecosys-
tem). The consequences of the process are not limited exclusively
to human needs, although these are emphasized. Degradation thus
includes more types and affects soils, biomass, water, and socioeco-
nomic services derived from ecosystems. I personally added to the
definition the word “natural,” which thus incorporates within LD
cases wherein all beneficial goods and services may remain at the
previous level but at the cost of a higher input of additional energy
(fertilizer, irrigation, human work, etc.). Even such cases in which
the natural potential of ecosystems is decreased should properly
be considered as LD.
2.1. Types of land degradation
This broad definition is suitable for the subsequent consider-
ation of LD typology. However, it leads to several complications
for further use. Above all, there is no consensus on how to assess
ecosystem goods and services. All authors who discuss LD in gen-
eral and who offer their own definitions or apply a certain point of
view to specific cases fail to present a comprehensive accounting
of LD types. Similarly as with most other typologies, accounting for
individual LD types is influenced primarily by the way in which the
problem is defined and the purpose of its further use, which affects
in particular the need for detail. The required level at which to
assess these processes is derived from the purpose of the typology
(global, regional, or local; Wiebe, 2003), which helps substantially
in deciding the suitability and measurability of individual types.
Another important factor determining the form of LD types relates
to the local characteristics of the study area, particularly in endeav-
oring to reflect the causes and processes which are dominant or
decisive in the given region or, in contrast, to suppress or exclude
from the assessment those types which are less important or are
not present.
In terms of the distribution of individual LD types, water and
wind erosion together with loss of biodiversity most frequently
occur in less populated areas, while in agricultural areas the dom-
inated types are water shortages, soil depletion, and soil pollution
(Nachtergaele et al., 2011). Bai et al. (2008) stated that almost
one-fifth of degraded land comprised cropland, while 23% was
deciduous forest, 19% coniferous forest, and 20–25% rangeland.
Currently used typologies emphasize physical, chemical, or bio-
logical processes caused by both natural factors and human use
695
of the land and/or ecosystem. Socioeconomic characteristics are
not presented as types of LD but exclusively as factors influencing
LD. Table 1 presents an overview of the LD types used in relevant
typological and case studies. Individual types are divided into LD
subcomponents, with the commonly used term soil degradation
also split into soil physics and soil chemistry. The list of types is not
definitive. The list can be expected to expand in the area of biodi-
versity, just as the tendency has recently been strengthening for the
definition of LD to be expanded further from its previous narrow
meaning of soil degradation to include other land components.
Compiling a general typology is no easy task in as much as LD
must be judged in its spatial, temporal, economic, and cultural con-
text (Warren, 2002). It generally holds that changes at the local level
affect global processes just as they are affected by these processes
(Wilbanks and Kates, 1999), and vice versa. Some types are mea-
surable only at the finest scales, while others are regional or global.
Most of the types are, however, identifiable across scales.
2.2. Causes of land degradation
The causes of LD have not been comprehensively deliberated in
terms of their typology, interrelationships, or possible effects. Not
even the terminology is unified, as in addition to the frequently used
term “cause” (e.g., Stocking and Murnaghan, 2001; Nachtergaele
et al., 2011; Nkonya et al., 2011), some authors (e.g., Barbier,
1997) have used the term “determinant”, and others (e.g., Meadows
and Hoffman, 2002) have used “factor.” Tefera et al. (2002) used
the two terms cause and factor, while Nachtergaele et al. (2011)
used both cause and driver, without detailing any differences in
their interpretation. It is necessary, however, to acknowledge one
essential difference between the term cause and the terms fac-
tor, determinant, and driver. The term “causes” carries with it a
negative connotation of agency, while “factors”, “determinants”,
and “drivers” simply indicate the occurrence of the phenomenon,
without raising the issue of an agent responsible for the negative
effects of what has happened. For this reason, it is not appropriate
to denote as causes of LD such aspects as tenure security, abil-
ity to defend rights, and enforcement of rules, but rather tenure
insecurity, inability to defend rights, and weak enforcement of
rules, respectively. As many authors do not take these nuances into
account, Table 2 presents an overview of causes as well as factors,
determinants, and drivers.
To date, causes of LD have been mentioned only in an incomplete
form or in the context of a specific LD type or research location.
Nkonya et al. (2011) distinguished immediate (proximate) and
underlying causes, which helps to clarify complicated causal rela-
tionships for further study. These authors expressed the complexity
of the relationship between these two levels in which some under-
lying causes appear in other cases as immediate causes and vice
versa. An example can be seen in tenure insecurity, which most
often appears as an immediate cause of LD but in some cases may
be classified as an underlying cause of poverty (Clerc, 2012). Spe-
cific causes may in certain cases even be consequences of Nkonya
et al. (2011) gave as an example those causes of poverty that lead
to insufficient investment in land management practices and to
loss of natural fertility. Similarly, degradation of land fertility can
also conversely establish or accelerate poverty. Cases where one LD
type causes another LD type are also possible, as for example loss of
vegetation cover (e.g., deforestation) may be a cause of water ero-
sion. These are further reasons why a general relationship scheme
at the level of individual LD causes has not yet been exhaustively
described and seemingly never can be.
Authors who include natural processes among causes of LD (see
Section 2) essentially agree on the basic division of causes into nat-
ural (biophysical) and human-induced causes (Nachtergaele et al.,
2011; Nkonya et al., 2011). A number of causes may seem to be
696 P. Sklenicka / Land Use Policy 57 (2016) 694–701

Table 1
Overviewof land degradation types mentioned in relevant typological and case studies.

Components Land Used in study

degradation
types

Oldeman (1994) Scherr and Yadav Stocking and Zuquette et al. Al-Awadhi et al. Bai et al. (2008) Omuto et al.
(1996) Murnaghan (2004) (2005) (2014)
(2001)

Soil physics Water erosion X X X X X X X

Wind erosion X X X X X X X
Compaction X X X X X
Crusting X X X X X
Sealing X X X X
Sedimentation/ X
silting
Increased X
temperature

Soil chemistry Acidification X X

Alkalinization X
Reduction of X X X X
organic matter
Nutrient leach- X X X X X
ing/depletion
Soil X X X X X
contamination

Water regime Water table X X

drawdown
Waterlogging X X
Salinization X X X X X X X
Water X
pollution

Vegetation Loss of X X X X X
vegetation
cover
Decline in X X X
species
diversity
Alien plant X
invasion

Air/climate Air pollution X X

Desertification X X

natural, but are in fact entirely, partially, or indirectly affected by
humans and their activities (e.g. air quality, climate characteristics,
soil vulnerability, water shortage, vegetation characteristics).
3. Description of farmland ownership fragmentation
In recent decades, a considerable number of European coun-
tries as well as China, India, and others (Anantha Ram et al.,
1999; Van Dijk, 2003; Tan et al., 2006) have been dealing with
the process of farmland ownership fragmentation and its effects.
In developed countries, this process also comes into conflict with
increasingly concentrated land use, modernization of farm machin-
ery, and increasing need for economically efficient management.
Land parcels are frequently so small that they cannot be individu-
ally farmed and their owners are forced to rent the land to become
part of the larger wholes of large agricultural holdings. This process
can be seen as gradually alienating owners from their land, result-
ing in clear negative impacts on most aspects of sustainable land
use (Sklenicka et al., 2014).
Prime examples of extremely fragmented land ownership pat-
terns are Central and Eastern European countries such as Slovakia,
Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria,
where mean farmland parcel sizes range between 0.3 and 0.5 ha
(Kopeva and Noev, 2001; Noev et al., 2003; Sabates-Wheeler, 2005;
Ciaian, 2008; Sklenicka et al., 2014). The fragmented, scattered,
and frequently inaccessible parcels are not economically viable for
individual farming (Sklenicka et al., 2009). Unlike in developing
countries, in Europe this considerable ownership fragmentation
contrasts sharply with predominantly modern farming methods
requiring large production blocks. The owners of small parcels are
essentially forced to rent these parcels to users farming nearby. In
the Czech Republic, for example, there are currently more than 3.5
million land owners, but only 30,000 farming entities (Sklenicka
et al., 2014). Together with Slovakia, this country holds the Euro-
pean record for alienating land owners from their land, as only
approximately 20% of land is farmed by its owners while the
remaining 80% is rented. According to Eurostat (2015), such coun-
tries as Poland, Ireland, and Romania have the opposite proportions,
while the EU average ranges around 45% of farmland being rented.
The main cause of ownership fragmentation is partible inheri-
tance, whereby land is divided among all heirs and is not passed,
for example, only to the oldest child. Partible inheritance occurs
in two ways. Either the land is physically divided among heirs or
the new heirs increase the number of land co-owners (Noev et al.,
2003). Both cases result in fragmentation of land ownership rights.
In addition to inheritance rights, the fragmentation process is influ-
enced by such other factors as the production potential of the land
(more fertile land is less fragmented) and various historic events
that caused sudden jumps in the fragmentation rate (e.g., expelling
the original inhabitants and dividing the land among new owners,
land reforms, and land consolidation; Sklenicka et al., 2009). The
second most important cause of fragmentation is the physical divi-
 P. Sklenicka / Land Use Policy 57 (2016) 694–701 697

Table 2
Overview of identified causes, factors, determinants, and drivers of land degradation based on relevant studies.

Character Causes/Factors/ Used in study

Determinants/Drivers

Barrow Stocking and Huber- Lu et al. Nachtergaele Nkonya et al. Other studiesa
(1991) Murnaghan Sannwald et al. (2007) et al. (2011) (2011)
(2001) (2006)

Natural (biophysical) Rainfall X X X X X

Wind X X X X
Temperature X X X X
Topography X X X
Geology X X
Soil vulnerability X X
Vegetation characteristics X X
Water characteristics X
Water shortage X X
Air quality X
Earthquake X X
Wild fires X X
Volcanic activity X X

Human-induced Overgrazing X X
(anthropogenic)
Overcultivation X X
Inappropriate management X X X X X X
Nutrient mining X
Water overdrawing X X
Deforestation X X
Marginalization X X
Mining X
Pollution and industrial causes X X
Climate change X
Inappropriate law and/or X X X
policy
Underdevelopment X X
Poverty X X X X X X
Population pressure/migration X X X X X X
Urban expansion X X
Tenure security X X X X
Access to markets X X
Availability of infrastructure X X
Economic incentives X X
Bioenergy subsidies X X
Labor availability X X
Inappropriate technology X X X
Health problems X X
Inadequate education X X
a
Other studies addressing specific cases of land degradation mention from one to three causes that frequently are specific to the given case.

sion of parcels during their sale, or change of use, most frequently
as a result of land conversion induced by development pressure
(Irwin and Bockstael, 2007).
3.1. Classifying ownership fragmentation as a cause of land
degradation
The justification for terming high to extreme levels of farm-
land ownership fragmentation as a new type of LD is derived from
the following arguments that reflect the main negative effects of
extreme fragmentation.
3.1.1. Small parcels are not economically viable for individual
farming
In the conditions of Central Europe, the mean size of a parcel eco-
nomically viable for individual farming is given as 1 ha (Sklenicka
et al., 2014). Of course, this threshold is lower in more fertile areas
and higher in less productive regions. Viable parcel size also differs
according to economic level and other specifics of the given country
or region. Farming overly small parcels is excessively expensive for
farmers due to the increased proportion of unproductive passages
over the parcel (Gonzalez et al., 2004) and the effect of travelling
between individual small parcels. That this is no minor issue can be
seen in the fact that more than 40% of farmland in the Czech Repub-
lic is distributed across parcels smaller than the economic viability
threshold (Sklenicka et al., 2014). Another large problem of such
highly fragmented ownership patterns lies in the fact that many
parcels are not accessible by road due to increasing fragmentation
that has not been accompanied by the construction of a denser
road network (Sklenicka, 2006). In most of the Central European
countries inaccessible parcels cannot be farmed by travelling across
neighboring parcels. For the owner of an inaccessible parcel, this
limits the possible tenants as the owner is forced to rent to the user
of a neighboring parcel. The lack of competition thus considerably
affects the rent to the owner’s disadvantage (Vranken and Swinnen,
2006). Overall, the freedom of owners to farm their own land is thus
substantially limited, as are their options when they rent their land.
This form of land ownership insecurity, which is economic rather
than legal, further manifests itself in the entirely dominant role
played by the land rental market, which often brings with it neg-
ative effects (which are discussed within a third argument – see
below).
698 P. Sklenicka / Land Use Policy 57 (2016) 694–701
3.1.2. Land divided into overly small parcels has considerably
lower value
Due to high ownership fragmentation, larger parcels are more
sought after and have a price advantage. In 2008, buyers in the
Czech Republic paid 44% more for 1 ha parcels than for average-size
parcels (0.4 ha), 2.2 times more for 2 ha parcels, and paid the most
for 8 ha parcels (2.8 times more; Sklenicka et al., 2013). Still larger
parcels had slightly lower prices. Maddison (2000) confirmed a sim-
ilar trend in England and Wales except among the smallest parcels,
where higher prices led to relatively higher transaction costs. In
contrast to these results, Huang et al. (2006) found in Illinois that
farmland value decreases with parcel size. It is highly likely that the
difference among trends comes from the fact that in the conditions
of Illinois very small parcels of the size in European conditions, such
as those of the Czech Republic, mostly did not exist and so were not
on the market. The observed decrease in prices with parcel size is
then consistent with the trend for larger parcels (i.e., those over
8 ha) determined by Sklenicka et al. (2013). Moreover, the contin-
uing division of parcels frequently leads to a loss of direct access
to land, which results in further decreases in the market price of
the land. Sklenicka et al. (2013) determined for conditions of the
Czech Republic that prices of parcels with access to roads are on
average 2.1 times higher than the prices for land without direct
access. These examples demonstrate that farmland is devalued sim-
ply through the physical division of parcels, even when fertility and
other relevant attributes influencing land value are held constant.
3.1.3. Land divided into overly small parcels is more frequently
rented and tenants take poorer care of it than do owners (Fraser,
2004; Carolan, 2005)
Economically nonviable small parcels are essentially “sen-
tenced” to be farmed through renting. A number of studies
presented below show this way to be far less sustainable, as ten-
ants care less well for the land entrusted to them than do farming
owners, in the same spirit as one does not wash a rented car.
This fact depends strongly on the given country’s level of land
tenure security. According to land monitoring in the Czech Repub-
lic over more than 30 years, for example, parcels farmed by tenants
considerably more frequently have diminished organic matter con-
tent, increased compaction, evidence of effects from erosion, and
overall decreased natural fertility (Research Institute for Soil and
Water Conservation, 2014). Regarding erosion control measures,
Sklenicka et al. (2015) determined that over the previous 5 years
owners used wide-row crops in crop rotation Schemes 45% as fre-
quently as did tenants, while they used soil-improving crops 1.9
times more frequently and contour farming 1.8 times more fre-
quently. In addition, the slope length in production blocks farmed
by owners was on average 41% of the slope length in blocks farmed
by tenants. A large number of other studies have confirmed that
insecure land tenure, caused mainly by short-term lease contracts,
does not contribute to soil conservation (e.g., Nowak and Korsching,
1983; Soule et al., 2000; Fraser, 2004). In cases of tenure insecu-
rity, Jacoby et al. (2002) found substantially lower use of organic
fertilizers, which have long-lasting benefits for soil fertility. Other
studies from across the globe and various political, economic, and
cultural systems have also confirmed the substantial positive effect
of tenure security on farm and land improvements (e.g., Feder and
Onchan, 1987; Gebremedhin and Swinton, 2003; Fenske, 2011), as
well as on farm productivity (Feder, 1987; Abdulai et al., 2011). In
addition to this effect, Scherr (2000) also found an effect of tenure
insecurity on soil compaction and nutrient depletion.
While the first two arguments, Small parcels are not economi-
cally viable for individual farming, and Land divided into overly small
parcels has considerably lower value, create conditions for LD or are
accompanying negative effects, the third argument, Land divided
into overly small parcels is more frequently rented and tenants take
poorer care of it than do owners, goes straight to the heart of the
definition of LD. Insufficient tenure security results in diminished
motivation to invest in holdings, to increase the fertility of the soil,
and also probably leads diminished motivation to invest in bio-
diversity protection, landscape renewal, and any potential water
resource protection. As a result, this management type, which we
can characterize by a low degree of land tenure security, can be
considered unsustainable. Particularly in countries where a sub-
stantial part of farmland is divided in this manner, a substantial
proportion of land is threated by degradation. This is confirmed,
among other things, by the results of long-term farmland monitor-
ing in the Czech Republic mentioned above, where about 80% of
farmland is farmed by tenant-farmers (Research Institute for Soil
and Water Conservation, 2015; Eurostat, 2015).
A study in Czech conditions (Sklenicka et al., 2014) has demon-
strated that very small parcels also display the phenomenon known
as the “Farmland Rental Paradox.” This describes the tendency of
ever smaller parcels (under 1 ha) to create increasingly larger pro-
duction blocks due to more frequent renting. Large production
blocks farmed by a single tenant and frequently comprising as many
as hundreds of parcels belonging to many owners often cover large
areas. Up to a level of several tens of hectares, such larger blocks
can bring economic benefits through lower expenses per unit area
(Gonzalez et al., 2004). This scenario is typical for intensive rural
areas, while in marginal environments fragmentation usually leads
to abandonment and related consequences.
Despite these benefits, however, overly large blocks hundreds
of hectares in area bring a number of problems by contribut-
ing considerably to water and wind erosion (Jenny, 2012) and by
homogenizing the farmland, which leads to numerous problems of
landscape and ecology (decreased spatial heterogeneity and land-
scape connectivity; Turner et al., 2001), water management (lower
resistance to hydrological extremes – drought and torrential rain;
Qiu and Turner, 2015), and agronomy (consolidating land with var-
ious agronomic characteristics into a single block and unifying its
farming; Sklenicka and Salek, 2008) with negative impacts also on
the visual value of the landscape and on its potential for recreational
uses (de Val et al., 2006).
The scheme proposed in Fig. 1 depicts on one side high land
ownership fragmentation as one of the underlying causes of tenure
insecurity, and on the other side the LD types most frequently
affected by tenure insecurity. Other underlying causes depicted
include eight socioeconomic or demographic causes describing pri-
marily legal, administrative, cultural and ethical, community, and
economic barriers to achieving tenure security. Of interest is the
inclusion of overall LD as one of the underlying causes of tenure
insecurity. In principle, any LD type or combination of types may
cause tenure insecurity. Degraded land discourages land owners
and tenants from making large investments in land/farms, partic-
ularly on long- and medium-term scales.
Tenure insecurity as an intermediate cause most frequently
leads to five LD types (Fig. 1): water erosion, wind erosion
(Sklenicka et al., 2015), reduction of organic matter (Jacoby et al.,
2002), soil compaction, and nutrient leaching/depletion (Scherr,
2000). At the same time, all of these types relate to soil degra-
dation. It is nevertheless highly likely that tenure insecurity can
also cause other LD types, in particular loss of vegetation cover,
decline in species diversity, alien plant invasion, and water table
drawdown, and others. Such speculations, however, are not yet
supported by sufficient high-quality research confirming them, nor
are they customarily associated through tenure insecurity to the
farmland fragmentation classified here.
 P. Sklenicka / Land Use Policy 57 (2016) 694–701
Fig. 1. High land ownership fragmentation as an underlying cause of tenure insecurity and the most frequently affected land degradation types.
3.2. Possible remedies
Ownership fragmentation is a dynamic process, the speed of
which depends mainly on the factors mentioned above, in a given
country. Corrective policies in countries with high fragmentation
should focus on three different levels: identifying the causes of frag-
mentation (slowing the process), decreasing current fragmentation
(defragmenting ownership), and remedying the effects.
3.2.1. Eliminating or mitigating the main causes of fragmentation
In this area, consideration is given primarily to legislative inter-
ventions into inheritance rights and interventions limiting the
freedom of land transactions. However, both of these options are
very unpopular in liberal market economies. In most European
countries, a complete change of inheritance rights from part-
ible inheritance to non-partible inheritance (e.g., primogeniture)
is highly unlikely. Nevertheless, it is realistic to introduce cer-
tain features of a majority inheritance system into current law.
Consideration can be given to such interventions as establishing
the minimum viable size of a single owner’s land holdings (farm)
and limiting the physical division of individual parcels. A possible
method would be to define a certain minimum sustainable parcel
size for the natural and economic conditions of a country or region,
and to endeavor to protect the land by law from further fragmenta-
tion. Similar partial limitations on inheritances and land sales can
already be found in the legal systems of some European countries.
3.2.2. Active defragmentation of land ownership
There are essentially three strong instruments for defragmenta-
tion. The first is a land sale market that enables land holdings to be
699
concentrated through individual contracts based on the free will of
the seller and purchaser. High ownership fragmentation rates are
very frequently caused by nonfunctional or weak selling markets.
The end result is a feedback loop. National policy can also be help-
ful, for example by supporting land acquisition loans to farming
entities (not speculators). This considerably strengthens the land
sale market. The second instrument is land consolidation, which
enables ownership to be concentrated through individual plans
and resultant changes in the land registry. The principle of land
consolidation is most frequently based on a change in the spatial
distribution of individual dispersed parcels in order to join individ-
ual owners’ parcels into larger wholes. However, implementation
of land consolidation is problematic in heterogeneous areas where
each parcel has distinct features for topographic and microclimatic
reasons. The amount of defragmentation achieved in this manner
varies across different countries and regions. In the Czech Repub-
lic, the initial number of parcels (6.3 parcels per owner; mean size
0.4 ha) could in this manner be decreased on average by one half
(Sklenicka et al., 2009). The most radical instrument for ownership
defragmentation is land reform. This method of changing owner-
ship rights is generally used, or enforced, only in exceptional cases
accompanying a change in the country’s political system and other
politically or economically exceptional situations. The use of this
instrument in countries with a liberal market system is unlikely.
Its defragmenting effect can be very “aggressive” depending on the
purpose and design of the rules of the reform itself.
3.2.3. Remedying the effects of extreme fragmentation
The land rental market is a natural instrument in market
economies capable of reacting very quickly to problems with farm-
700 P. Sklenicka / Land Use Policy 57 (2016) 694–701
ing mall, economically nonviable parcels. The land rental market is
usually most highly developed in countries with poorly functioning
land sale markets. The smaller the parcels are, the more intensive
and the easier is their rental. In Central and Eastern European coun-
tries, the rental market began to work relatively well following the
transformation of planned economies into market economies after
1990. In contrast, the land sale market has grown only gradually
in these countries and in some it is not sufficiently developed even
after a quarter of a century. The second effective instrument for
remedying effects consists in farm subsidies. If designed properly,
these subsidies can encourage responsible and sustainable land use
among owners and tenants. An example can be seen in direct Euro-
pean subsidies to farming entities with payment conditioned on
meeting standards for good agricultural and environmental con-
ditions which focus in particular on erosion control, groundwater
management, and increasing soil organic matter (Sklenicka et al.,
2015). A supportive policy option for reducing fragmentation is
when priority for renting and buying is accorded to neighbours
(option). This type of policy exists in some European countries.
All three remedial approaches may include the very useful addi-
tional instrument of raising awareness and educating land owners
and tenants. Information on soil degradation by fragmentation,
and on possible remedies, may lead to higher voluntary engage-
ment in slowing fragmentation, defragmentation, and remedying
the effects of fragmentation.
4. Conclusions
Despite the relatively complicated causal relationship affect-
ing LD processes, this study has substantiated the argument that
high farmland ownership fragmentation is an underlying cause
affecting tenure insecurity as an immediate cause for various types
of LD. It is therefore necessary to focus attention and necessary
resources on prevention and against existing fragmentation. To this
end, countries and regions with currently high rates of land owner-
ship fragmentation should act immediately on several levels. They
must eliminate or at least mitigate causes the accelerate the frag-
mentation process, defragment current land ownership, and also
remedy the consequences of this process. Even countries that have
not until now had high rates of fragmentation are threatened, as
the trend of the fragmentation process indicates that a problem-
atic level may be reached in the foreseeable future. In such cases,
efforts must be directed primarily at slowing the process.
Land ownership fragmentation also leads to loss of the sense of
responsibility for the condition of the land and landscape. Extreme
farmland ownership fragmentation can be identified as a major
cause of unsustainable land use. In addition, land ownership frag-
mentation in combination with excessive concentration of land use
into a small number of large agricultural holdings can lead to the
disruption and even total destruction of traditional social structures
and relationships in the countryside.
Acknowledgements
This contribution was written on the basis of than 15 years
of research into the causes and effects of farmland ownership
fragmentation, which has been supported in phases by National
Agency for Agricultural Research grant No. QH8D, by Czech Sci-
ence Foundation grant No. GA14-09212S, and by EEA grant No.
EHP-CZ02-OV-1-027-2015.
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