Dace Platonova’s research while affiliated with Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies and other places

Already during the Land Reform, land properties of several land parcels were formed in the rural areas. Another factor that benefits to the fragmentation of farm properties is development of land market because buying or renting land for farm size building, it is not always possible to find adjacent land plot. Consequently, the land fragmentation not only makes land management difficult, but also increases the transport costs. With this rural land tenure system, competitive and efficient agricultural production cannot be discussed, so a large part of rural areas remains untreated. It was found that there is a strong correlation between the area of land parcels and their management - the smaller the area of a land parcel by the agricultural land, the greater the chance that it would not be managed, and vice versa, the greater the area, the more it is cultivated, that is, managed. Land consolidation is performed as the farm land use optimization activities in other countries. Land consolidation can be one of the efficient means for rural development, it can encourage formation of competitive agricultural production structure, giving farmers the opportunity to create holdings with a small number, but bigger size and better-shaped land plots. Thus, more income and opportunities to expand types of farming are created.

The problem of land fragmentation is analyzed and discussed in various studies from different perspectives. Various authors have used different measures and coefficients to describe the land fragmentation although none of the indicators gives a full assessment of this phenomenon. This is due to the wide range nature of the land fragmentation and different approaches to these problems. The paper describes the various factors of land fragmentation. They are selected to describe its several different parameters. The economically active farms of Rubene rural municipality by their sizes and the number of land units were chosen as the research object to examine usage of the above parameters for assessment of the fragmentation of the farms. Introduction Last Latvian land reform has substantially altered the land usage structure of land properties and farm lands in rural areas. It has resulted in the emergence of many very small agricultural land properties. Their separate land parcels are often located far apart, they are not easily accessible and are situated unsuitably for agricultural purposes. Although the Land Reform legislation initially provided creation of favorable regional preconditions for successful development of agricultural production, suggesting compact farms and avoiding inter-areas (Nolikums par Latvijas...,1991), in the practice, due to different objective and sometimes subjective factors, farm land properties were formed on a number of land parcels, resulting in land fragmentation and inter-areas (Jankava, 2003). After that, little by little, under more favorable circumstances for agriculture, the land market evolved in the parallel of the processes of land privatization. It has resulted in increasing of the farms sizes through the sale, leases and other transactions. This is demonstrated by the studies of dynamics of land areas of economically active farms (2003 -2007), derived from the Central Statistical Bureau of the Republic of Latvia (Янкава, Менготс, 2009). The average area of farms by the total area and by the agriculturally usable land and the sown area are increasing over the years. Although their average area is still very small; besides, a significant proportion of them represents a very small farms. The distribution survey of farm lands of Latvia by the year 2007 showed that almost 80% of their total number and more than 30% of the total area were amounted to a holding area of up to 2 ha (Янкава, Менготс, 2009). Development of the land market contributes to the fragmentation of holdings because it is not always possible to find an adjacent land plot to buy or lease for the land area building up purpose. Land fragmentation makes farming and land management difficult, it increases also transport costs. Similar processes occur in rural areas of our immediate neighbors -Lithuania (Lankelis, 2002) and Estonia (Maasikamäe, 2005), as well as in other Eastern and Western European countries (Хоржан, 2005). This phenomenon causes the fact that farmers are feeling difficult to introduce new competitive manufacturing steps and to use the appropriate technique; therefore many farmers are forced to engage the production only for living, unable to participate in the manufacturing for commercial purposes. While there are a number of information basis in Latvia, like State Real Estate Cadastre Information System (IS RESC), as well as the Central Statistical Bureau, by which aggregated data we may have an overall view on the farms size, fragmentation, number of the land parcels forming a land plot, but each of them also have their weaknesses. By RESC IS data, it is not possible to know the real farms areas because not all rural farmers register lease lands in this information system. The most recent data by the Central Statistical Bureau is only about the year 2007. These considerations prompted the choice of the subject and the aim of the research was set – to explore fragmentation of farm lands and opportunities of applying different its characterizing indicators. The tasks were set to reach the aim: 1. to complete theoretical analysis on the land fragmentation and its characterizing indicators; 2. to analyze fragmentation of the land areas of the largest farms of Rubene rural municipality; 3. to observe advantages and disadvantages of the land fragmentation indicators.