The Impact of Land Consolidation on Livestock Production in Asturias’ Parishes: A Spatial Production Analysis

Abstract

This chapter evaluates the impact of the land consolidation (LC) processes that have taken place in Asturias during the period 2001–2017. These processes have received European funds as they help to improve the economic activity in rural areas. In particular, the LC processes involve very localized public investments in infrastructures that favour accessibility and development not only in the local but also in adjacent areas. To evaluate the effect of LC processes on milk and beef production, we treat the parishes in Asturias as production units and estimate a set of multi-output distance functions. Our results indicate that LC contributes to increase parishes’ livestock production, although those processes not always are accompanied by an increase in the number of farms. We also find that the (indirect) effect from LC processes implemented in neighbouring parishes is positive and even more relevant than the (direct) effect on the local LC processes.

The authors would like to thank the financial support obtained from the Regional Government of the Principality of Asturias in conjunction with FEDER (Grant FC-15-GRUPIN14-048). This chapter was also supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economics, Industry and Competitiveness (Grant MINECO-18-ECO2017-85788-R).

Appendix: Literature Review on Land Consolidation (LC)

Paper	Objective	Sample	Methodology	Results
Burger (2001)	Analyse the agricultural transformation, land redistribution and land tenure and the role of agriculture in the Hungarian economy	309 farms in 11 counties of Hungary in 1998	Questionnaire	LC has taken place mainly by renting. Rented land increases with the increasing farm size
Coelho et al. (2001)	Proposition of a model that incorporates methods for the evaluation of the performance of the agricultural system before and after the LC project	The model was applied to the Valenca LC in 1989, before project execution, and in 1995 after implementation	The model evaluates each effect of the project (land, irrigation and drainage and road reconstruction) on a technical and social basis and estimates its economic impacts	The results suggest that a multidisciplinary approach, supported by robust models, can be used as a reliable basis for the evaluation and decision- making process of LC projects
Crecente et al. (2002)	Review the process of LC in Galicia analysing economic, social and environmental effects	Parishes with and without LC processes. Cases of two municipalities	Comparative analysis of consolidated and non-consolidated areas in Galicia	LC contributes to retaining farmland in agricultural use and improves the population evolution in rural areas, although there are changes in use from cropland to pasture land
Vitikainen (2004)	Discuss the similarities and differences in the LC procedure in various European countries	Objectives and contents of LC in Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden	Comparison of the organization, objectives, legal procedure, costs and financing and the development of LC between countries	The demand for LC arises from the need for promoting the appropriate use of the land. There are differences in the objectives and procedures of LC between countries related to factors like historical trends, culture, tradition and legislation
Wu et al. (2005)	Examine and measure the impact and cost-effectiveness of the comprehensive agricultural development program on Chinese agriculture	Data collected from a survey to 227 Chinese farm households	This paper uses a production function approach	The program has improved land quality and the productivity of household crop production, and overall has been cost-effective
Lerman and Cimpoieş (2006)	Examine LC within of process of agrarian reform	Several surveys in Moldova, made in different years and previously published	Analysis of several surveys	LC leads to better economic performance. Land leasing is used as a market mechanism for consolidation
Miranda et al. (2006)	Examine the geographic, agricultural, socio-economic and environmental effects of LC in Galicia since the 1950s	Databases related to 315 Galician municipalities and 3793 parishes. Data from 1129 LC processes related to the period 1950–2001	Methodology drawn up by the European Union for evaluation of its socio-economic programs	LC has in general made a positive contribution to slowing rural depopulation
Yu et al. (2010)	Identify and classify the ecological risks in LC. Develop a framework of the theory and method to assess the change of ecological risk degree before and after LC	A case study of a LC project in Chongyang County, Hubei Province, China	Analytical hierarchical processing (AHP) method to the data resources from the LC project in Southern China to allocate weightings to the indices of ecological risk (ER) and to set up an integrated index system for the ecological risk identification. This integrated index system encompasses the ecological risks with three factors (water, soil and biology) and 14 indices	The ER is reduced from 58.02 to 28.8 after LC and the degree of ecological risk is down from degree III to degree IV. The water ER is reduced from 21.53 to 6.16; its contribution to reduce the ecological risk is 53%. The reduced ERs of soil and biology are, respectively, 12.79 and 1.06; their contribution of ecological risk reduce is lower than water
Hartvigsen (2014)	Study of land reform in 25 countries in Central and Eastern of Europe from 1989 and onwards and provide an overview of applied land reform approaches	Land reform approaches applied in 25 countries in Central and Eastern Europe from the Baltic and Central European countries in the West to Russia and the small Trans-Caucasus countries in the east, and to the Balkan countries in the south	With a basis in theory on land fragmentation, the linkage between land reform approaches and land fragmentation is explored	Land fragmentation is often hampering agricultural and rural development when both landownership and land use is highly fragmented
Lisec et al. (2014)	Investigate the opinion of LC participants about LC	Responses to a questionnaire of 254 landowners from 3 areas of Slovenia in 2011	Survey conducted on a sample of private landowners involved in selected LC projects	The active participation of landowners contributes to their comprehension of the aims and to their satisfaction with the results of the LC
Zhang et al. (2014)	Identify the changes resulting from the LC implementation and to develop a parametric approach to assess the resource-environment effects	Case study of Tianmen LC project in Hubei Province of China	Use of indexes to assess the different effects of LC	LC causes positive and negative effects. Positive effects were demonstrated in agricultural production capacity and in its costs. The negative effects were expressed by the ecosystem services value, landscape diversity and human disturbance intensity
Guo et al. (2015)	Identify and measure the effect of LC on the multifunctionality of cropland ecosystems	Analysis of county scale LC projects in the 31 provinces of China (period 2006–2012)	Set pair analysis methodology. Variable fuzzy sets analysis	LC have significantly improved the production function of cropland, driven investment in agriculture, promoted development of the rural agricultural economy, maintained food security and stability in the rural area. However, it also impaired rural ecological benefits in some provinces
Wang et al. (2015)	Understand how LC affects landscape patterns and ecosystems investigating the ecosystem service value and the ecological connectivity in a consolidated area of Da’an City from 2008 to 2014 using a revised ecological connectivity index	Consolidated area of Da’an City from 2008 to 2014 (China)	Use an ecosystem service evaluation and a revised ecological connectivity index	LC has certain negative influences on the ecosystem services. LC could change the ecological connectivity as well as the land-use structure
Hiironen and Riekkinen (2016)	Evaluate agricultural impacts and profitability of LC	12 LC projects implemented in Finland	Standard statistical methods, production cost calculations and feasibility analyses	LC is an effective and feasible land management tool for the improvement of property structure. Due to the improvement of property structure the average production costs decrease 15%
Paper	Objective	Sample	Methodology	Results
Jiang et al. (2017)	Propose an assessment model to estimate the improvement of land productivity potential via LC	Region of Shenyang City (China)	Use of a system for assessing the cultivated land productivity potential before and after LC	The effect of the concentration is based on an increase of more than 20% in the potential productivity of the land
Jin et al. (2017)	Evaluation of the effectiveness of LC policy	Detailed geospatial information for 5328 LC projects implemented between 2006 and 2010 in China	Generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) to predict project effectiveness incorporating selected biophysical, social-economic variables as fixed effects and province variables to model random effects	The overall effectiveness of LC in improving agricultural productivity is low. There are also clear regional differences
Luo and Timothy (2017)	Evaluation of the performance of LC in terms of rural households’ levels of satisfaction in rural China	Data gathered via questionnaires in the regions of Hangzhou, Changsha and Guiyang (China)	Probit model	The overall satisfaction rate was 76.5%. Residents’ satisfaction with LC depends, among others, on farmers’ level of education, family size, level of agricultural mechanization and their participation in rural production cooperatives
Demetriou (2018)	Present and discuss the development, implementation and evaluation of two different automated valuation models (AVMs) for a case study LC	Case study area in Cyprus	Estimation of two hedonic price models combined with a geographical information system (GIS)	The AVM is highly efficient compared to conventional land valuation methods and provides transparency
Du et al. (2018)	Propose a straightforward method to assess agricultural productivity changes using remote sensing data	Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer NDVI time series from 2001 to 2013 and data on LC projects completed in China in 2006 and 2007	Two indexes were used to evaluate the effects of LC: the rate of change in the mean annual NDVI and the coefficient of variation of this variable before and after consolidation	78.67% of projects in 2006 and 78.32% of those in 2007 proved effective at either improving or stabilizing productivity
Dudzińska et al. (2018)	Assessment of the socio-economic effects of consolidations at the meso-level in rural areas	Polish communes in which both traditional and infrastructural consolidations had been implemented over an area of at least 15% of the commune’s area	The level of socio-economic development was assessed based on an indicator of the rate of changes, calculated as the difference between the levels of commune development indicator for the years 2004 and 2016	Implementation of traditional consolidations of agricultural land is one of the factors contributing to an increase in the level of socio-economic development of rural areas
Li et al. (2018)	Investigate the challenges in implementing LC in rural China and to pose policy implications for rural sustainability	LC project in a village community of Shandong Province (China)	Analysis and reflection on the process of LC	LC is needed to coordinate and improve the changing human-land relationship in rural China. It is needed an expanded rural land market. LC should be implemented by respecting local stakeholders’ willingness and request
Nilsson (2018)	Examine the role of land use consolidation on agricultural productivity among smallholder farmers in Rwanda	Random sample of 1538 households across Rwanda of which 25 per cent participated in land use consolidation between 2010 and 2014	Household-level data are used to estimate a fixed-effects model with matched control groups to mitigate selection bias	Positive association between land use consolidation and crop yields (among farms with landholdings greater than one hectare)
Paper	Objective	Sample	Methodology	Results
Shi et al. (2018)	Research on LC projects by integrating landscape pattern analysis with production, living, and ecological benefit assessments	Two municipal LC projects in China were selected for analysis	By an evaluation index system, the authors quantitatively estimate the dynamic changes in the production, life and ecological benefits of the two project areas	LC has directly or indirectly improved landscape ecological patterns. LC has improved the balanced distribution of cultivated land and the concentrated distribution of construction land in the project area
Zeng et al. (2018)	Evaluate the impacts of LC on agricultural technical efficiency of producers	Data from a field survey executed during July 2010 and July 2016. A total of 900 producers were chosen randomly from 30 LC projects in the Jiangsu Province (China)	Stochastic frontier analysis production function	Land tenure transfer, land fragmentation, non-agricultural income and crop diversity have undergone significant changes after LC. The overall agricultural technical efficiency of producers had also increased considerably after LC
Zhang and Zhang (2018)	Analyse the interference by human activities caused by LC engineering in terrestrial ecosystems	Analysis of a project area located in Mugong Village in Guanling County (China)	GIS technology, ecological values, landscape pattern indexes and an ecological risk evaluation were used to construct an ecological sensitivity evaluation index	The project area was divided into sensitivity zones according to the results that provide suggestions for future land management decisions
Colombo and Perujo-Villanueva (2019)	Propose a methodology for assessing ex-ante the most suitable areas in which LC initiatives could be carried out	The case study focuses on olive groves in the Andalusia region (Spain). Interviews to 72 landowners	Interviews to 72 landowners and use of a methodology for assessing ex-ante LC projects	LC procedure in the areas identified would bring about a noticeable improvement in the property structure and production cost savings of between 5.8% and 15.3%
Janus and Markuszewska (2019)	Verify the hypothesis of persistence of favourable basic parameters of LF and other factors affecting the efficiency of agricultural production after LC	Jabłonka commune located in the southern Poland	Comparison of indicators for all villages from the commune selected	There is a multigenerational and positive impact of LC on the development and functioning of rural areas. This is evident regarding the average plot size, the road accessibility, the land fragmentation indicators and the lowest level of land abandonment
Zhou et al. (2019)	Analyse the mechanism and path behind LC boosting poverty alleviation	Data on LC in Fuping County (China)	Revision of the evolution of China’s land policies related to poverty alleviation since 1978. Case study method	LC has contributed to increasing cultivated land area, promoting agricultural production scale, improving rural production conditions and living environment, alleviating ecological risk and supporting for rural development and poverty alleviation