Family Farming Knowledge Platform

Land Market Development and Small Farms’ Access to Land in the Pre-Accession Countries

This report analyses the land markets’ functioning in the Western Balkans and small farm households’ access to land. For that purpose, survey questionnaires, focus groups, and desk research for each of the targeted Western Balkan countries/territories (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo∗, Montenegro and Serbia), were used. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that these countries/territories face many problems that impede the development of the functional agricultural land market, which is in some cases still highly unregulated. Lack of reliable and accurate data presents a huge issue. In all of the analysed countries/territories, the registers of agricultural land and cadastre are not updated, are unreliable, uncoordinated and unharmonized, which consequently implies incomplete information on land ownership and unclear property rights. This impedes subsidization of farmers and the sale of the land and hampers the use of agricultural land as collateral for crediting purposes. Based on the conducted analysis, it can be concluded that WB countries/territories still have a long way to establish a functional agricultural land market. Land market ineffectiveness impedes the growth of farm size and modernization of the agricultural sector.

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Publisher: Regional Rural Development Standing Working Group in SEE (SWG)
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Organization: Regional Rural Development Standing Working Group in SEE (SWG)
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Year: 2018
ISBN: 978-608-4760-37-5
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Geographical coverage: Europe and Central Asia
Type: Report
Content language: English
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