In Poland land consolidation is carried out mainly in the southern part of the country. In three voivodships, namely Lubelskie Voivodship, Podkarpackie Voivodship and Małopolskie Voivodship, in the years 2003-2014 there were numerous land consolidations, over 20,000 ha in each voivodship. In another three voivodships (Warmińsko-Mazurskie, Zachodniopomorskie and Kujawsko-Pomorskie) there are no land consolidations, even though according to scientists from the Polish, every voivodship requires land consolidations processes. What is the reason for that situation?

Consolidation and post-consolidation development-related investments are an opportunity to improve living and working conditions of rural residents. Land consolidation is practically the only comprehensive tool to improve the shape of the transport network in the areas covered by this process. Moreover, improving the quality of the transport network is in fact one of the main objectives of land consolidation works.

The spatial structure of land in south-eastern Poland is characterized by a high fragmentation, small farms and a road network that is not adjusted to the requirements of modern, mechanized agricultural production. The patchwork pattern of land ownership is one of the main factors that negatively affect agricultural production. Fields located in an external patchwork can be fully used for agricultural production, but the production costs are higher, and the income from the farm is smaller.

Taking Daxing District, Beijing, China as a example, benefit evaluation index system of small-town land comprehensive consolidation is established from four aspects of resource benefit, economic benefit, social benefit and ecological benefit. Weight of evaluation index is determined by analytic hierarchy process. After the standardized treatment on the original value index, comprehensive index method is adopted to evaluate the land comprehensive consolidation benefits in 14 towns of Daxing District in the year 2005, combining with the index weight determined by analytic hierarchy process.

Build database of the Research Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics collecting data on the extent of sale in agricultural land and its average market price in selected districts of Slovakia since 2001 was completed by data of the year 2014. A basis for the database building is formed by the data coming from the real sale and purchase agreements which are registered in the Land Register and were obtained by cooperation with the Research Institute of Geodesy and Cartography.

In this study, determination of farmers’ view on land consolidation applications in İpsala region and its impacts on the changes in agricultural structure were aimed at. With this aim, the investigations were realized in Kocahıdır and Küçükdoğanca villages placed in the land consolidation Project area. The consolidation rates for Kocahıdır and Küçükdoğanca villages were 34 % and 27 %, respectively. The majority of the participated farmers (92 % ) expressed that land consolidation increased farm productions.

In the Western region of Ukraine, melioration is both of economic and social importance. The area of reclaimed lands constitutes 2.2 million ha or 24 % of the total agricultural lands in the region. Thus, melioration is of great importance for social-economic development of agro-industrial complex of the territory. Under conditions of the land reform in Ukraine, reclaimed lands were subjected to sharing and privatization causing a negative impact on efficiency of its utilization and technical conditions of the reclaimed land infrastructure.

The main tasks of land consolidation are to eliminate land fragmentation and to facilitate farms of optimal size. One of the most important preconditions of land consolidation is forming of optimal size farmland plots in property and use, and land fragmentation, which has a major impact on both the operating conditions and other rural development processes. Land fragmentation bothers not only land management, but also increases transport costs. During the land reform in the rural areas, land plots in ownership and rented land plots are developed per several land units.

Socio-economic development, public safety of local communities and environmental protection are the major pillars of the concept of sustainable development of rural areas in Europe. Land consolidation is a complex and time-consuming undertaking, which requires high expenditures, yet it plays an important role in the policy of sustainable and multi-functional development. The rapid climate change observed in recent years, resulting in a number of unusual weather conditions, has also had an effect on the directions of land consolidation development.

Agricultural transport roads play an important role not only from the point of view of individual farm holdings, but also the general development of rural areas. Roads constitute an element of the technical infrastructure indispensable for communication and transport; they play a role in shaping the rural landscape, and the routes they follow affect the forms and size of agricultural land and forest areas found within the area covered by a given road system. The existing public road network does not always provide access to all fields.

The current state of agricultural production space is the outcome of centuries of human activity, as conditioned by socio-economic, legal, and political factors. The characteristic features of the spatial layout of land, which has been shaped in this historical process in the rural areas of southern and south-eastern Poland, are farms divided into a large number of parcels, lack of access to parcels, irregular shapes of parcels, and their scattering in space.

From the old times Lithuanian manors were the main centres of diplomacy, administration and culture. The applied land reforms, war and post-war periods and changing regimes altered the structures of the manors; their owners and users changed as well. The number of homesteads of manors and their territory highly decreased. During various periods of time more than 150 manors were present in the current territory of Panevėžys district municipality. The aim of the research is to analyse the land use of the least researched homesteads of former manors in 1923 and 2016.