Investments with public money in agriculture have led to a debate about 'unauthorised or hidden' state aid. Why is this money available for the agricultural sector, but perhaps not for other economic - private - sectors? I guess one should look beyond the individual farm level and look at the sector in a particular area. Exchanging land is much more efficient (better optimalisation possible) when all land owners/users do participate. It is very difficult to achieve this without an external party facilitation LC processes/projects. That can be an argument to justify public investments in time (process/project management) and money (improvements in the field).

Better allocation of land and enlargement of farms support viable farming practices, and thus can lead to more private investments and better stewardship. If people feel they have a perspective for further development in the future, they are more likely to invest. This creates a spin-off for suppliers in the agricultural sector too. 

Despite the fact that many European countries have implemented a land consolidation programmes and projects for decades, some for more than a century, in general very little efforts have been made on systematically evaluating the socio-economic impacts of the public investments in land consolidation. In Turkey, during 2014-15, FAO supported monitoring and evaluation of the land consolidation programme with a pilot impact evaluation of one fully implemented project. The pilot evaluation found that the public investments in land consolidation were followed up private investments by the farmers in development of their farms, e.g. in drip irrigation after the project provided access to irrigation, in planting orchards on the consolidated and enlarged land parcels. Such investments were often not feasible when the land of one landowner / farmer was fragmented into several small parcels.

In my experiences in the landconsolidation Driebruggen east of Gouda in the Netherlands a lot of famers had land on both sides of two railway tracks. It was one of the onjectives of this landconsolidation plan the exchange the parcels in such a way that for 15 farmers it was possible with their own investments to built 15 new farmhouse with all the land around this buildings. This farns are still their after more than 20 years. 

Investments in road, waterways water storage are public investments.