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Since 2014, North Macedonia has developed into the flagship country for FAO support to land consolidation in Europe and Central Asia. The first small technical assistance project began in 2014. During 2017–2022, support to the national land consolidation programme was scaled up with European Union IPA funding through the FAO-implemented MAINLAND project. In August 2022, a second EU IPA-funded and FAO-implemented project “Enhancing land consolidation in North Macedonia” was launched and will continue until 2026 in close collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy. From the beginning, the Government of North Macedonia’s vision has been to build up and implement a fully operational national land consolidation programme.

In addition to the mentioned core land consolidation activities and projects, FAO has in North Macedonia in the same period provided technical assistance to a number of land policy-related activities, including to the privatization of state-owned agricultural land, addressing land abandonment and supporting the development of agricultural land markets.

This publication aims to document the lessons learned from the introduction of a land consolidation instrument in North Macedonia during the period 2014–2023. The purpose is to share the experiences with land consolidation, which will also be of great relevance for other countries in Europe and Central Asia and beyond that are in the process of introducing land management instruments such as land consolidation and land banking. The structural problems in agriculture with small average farm sizes, excessive land fragmentation, water scarcity, need for modern irrigation systems and weak agricultural land markets are also present in several countries in North Africa, the Near East and South East Asia. In some of these countries, there is also an increased interest in the introduction of land consolidation instruments.