AGRICULTURAL LAND UTILISATION PROJECT
Project Identification No 05KOS01/06/005
ALUP Technical Paper nr 7
by
Niels Otto Haldrup and Avni
Ramadani
August 2006
Land
consolidation baseline survey
Introduction
The
View over Shishman, Gjakova in the background.
Contact
was established to the village and an agreement was made with a group of
farmers to make a picture of the existing situation of land location in the form
of a map with different signatures for each owner’s lands. Only, thereafter,
would it be discussed if there is any interest in continuing in negotiating
land consolidation on a voluntary basis.
Methodology
The key
medium in the baseline survey has been the map both for actually locating each
field and also as a concrete basis for communication. An interview would
typically take about a half to at most 1 hour during which the fields of the
owner were located on the ortophoto map and a few additional questions were
made according to a simple A4-questionnaire.
Mapping
technique: In the first meeting with a group of farmers the approximate
location of land was indicated on a topographical map (purchased by ALUP at
KCA) of the village and surrounding area in 1:15.000 in form of a print A3. On
this basis the ALUP project bought ortophoto at the KCA over the “target area”
in scale 1:2500 with an overlay of the cadastral map from the late 1980s. This
map was bought in two copies one for field use and one for office-backup. The
photos are from 2004 and allow for easy identification of the fields and
indication of changes in de-facto ownership and use. Owners quickly recognise
terrain features and the fields were in most cases identified without actually
going to the site. The owner were also asked who their neighbours are on each
side of each parcel; providing the key to the next owners to contact. In this
way the absentee owners were identified. Owners were also asked in which name
ownership is registered.
Identification of the fields on the
ortofoto
Questionnaire:
the questions were limited to those concerning land use, ownership and
location, actual farming practice and finally enquiring about plans for the
future and possible preferences with respect to land.
Areas of
fields were informed by owners and a few have subsequently been taken from the
map. Plotting on the photomap was done together with owners during the
interview directly on the ortophoto map. No field measurements have been made.
The thematic map with ownership was prepared in the office on basis of a print
of just the old cadastral map, that is, just a conventional cadastral paper map
with black boundary lines on white paper.
Unrecorded
transactions: Only in exceptional cases is the present owner registered as such
in the possession list. It clearly emerged from the ownership map where new
boundaries have not been reported / recorded. There a number of such cases.
Nonetheless, without quantifying into percentages it can be said that in most
cases it is still the old boundaries of the cadastral map that set the
structure of the layout of the fields.
Plotting of each owners fields with separate signatures
Fact
farm structure in Shishman village
It was
agreed to focus on the lower lands surrounding the village and mainly those
between the river and the road. Some farmers do have parcels of forest and a
few have grazing land in the higher lands. These are not considered. A few have
parcels on the other side of the river. A few parcels belong to owners living
in Shishman Bokes.
Within
this area of focus the following specific facts emerged:
Number
of farmers interviewed: 60
Their
total area of farmland with the focus area: 75,1 ha.
Number
of absentee land owners
(defined
as living outside the village in Gjakova/Pristina/Abroad): 26 (43 %).
Land
owned by absentee owners: 24,5 ha (33 %).
It
follows that:
Average
size of land parcel: 0,6 ha.
Average
size of farm holding (owned land): 1,3 ha.
What
they own outside this focus area includes: Fields further away, grazing land in
the higher lands, and forest.
In – by
far – most cases the name of current de-facto owner is not in the possession
list. Typically, it is the name of father or grand father that is registered.
In some cases owners have directly sold/purchased land without recording the
transaction.
Besides,
it appears that ownership of villagers coincide with the boundary of the
cadastral zone. There are only few cases where a parcel is owned by a person
from another village and vice versa.
With
respect to actual land market practice it emerged during the interviews that
there are a few cases of direct selling and buying of land indicating some
experience with price setting.
The
situation of fragmentation appears from the map.
Situation of ownership and location of farm land around the
Shishman village
Characterization
of agricultural activity in Shishman
There
are no real commercial farmers in the village. The majority of farming activity
is oriented towards subsistence, that is primarily for family needs. Some farmers do have intentions of increasing
their farming activity, for example, building a new stable for the livestock,
there are a few small orchards. However, the most common crop is a combination
of cereals, maize and grass for hey.
Minority
and gender issues
A total
of 60 owners were interviewed. In none of the cases was the registered owner or
de-facto owner or user informed to be a woman. All owners interviewed were
Albanians. No cases of absentee ownership by Serbian or other ethnic group was
encountered.
Assessment
of interest in land consolidation
Some
express a general interest and believe that land consolidation would be good
for the village. Others see the difficulty in exchanging land of different
value. Some are sceptical. A few owners are already discussing concrete land
exchanges. Many have no real opinion.
The
concrete need for any particular owner can not just be deduced form the
existing layout of parcels – it depends as much of what plans this owner may
have for the future farming activity. Besides, it can be unusual or not so
simple for people to state an interest in land exchange at an early stage
without considering specific options. In practice, preferences develop when
first a real land consolidation is in progress.
Land
mobility
Land
mobility means the scope of freedom in re-structuring layout of farm land and
also in the same process changing farm size.
The
factors that influence land mobility include (a) the probability that some
owners will sell more than they buy or just sell, (b) the availability of
municipality land, which could be flexible either if the municipality would be
willing to lease on long term lease or just sell, (c) the availability of
recently privatised SOE land with fragmentation problem and or with some
remotely located parcels, which the new owner might consider selling.
Assessment
of land mobility:
(a)
With
relatively small holdings it is at a first sight not very likely that owners
will “net-sell”. Yet, this can only be tested in the real land consolidation
negotiation stage.
(b)
No
municipal land was encountered.
(c)
No SOE
land was encountered.
Assessment:
It is likely that some de-fragmentation can be achieved. However, the degree of
freedom in re-design is limited and the scope for increasing farm size in any
significant measure appears also limited.
Costs
of baseline survey
Direct costs:
Purchase
of topographical map: 5 Euro.
Ortophoto
with overlay of cadastral map, two copies: 50 Euro
One
print of the cadastral map: 15 Euro
Colour
pencils. 5 Euro
Tube for
carrying the maps: 17 Euros
Total
cash costs: 92 Euro
Time:
A total
of 30 days with 15 days for introductory visits and interviews and the rest for
preparation of map and data base. The time spend includes training as this was
a first experience.
Pilot
experience with data acquisition
The
situation of technology displays a paradox. On the one hand the modern GIS
technology is available and the infrastructure for it already well established
in Kosovo; including the level of professional knowledge. On the other hand
land consolidation is confronted with the fact that the information it needs is
not available from the property registers.
This is
because the situation on the ground is not mirrored in the registers. As
experienced in the pilot village, most registered names of owners in the
possession lists are outdated and in many cases boundaries have also been
changed without updating their representation in the cadastral map. The only
way to acquire the correct information on de-facto land ownership and use is,
therefore, to retrieve this information directly from the individual farmers;
as demonstrated in the pilot project. The GIS technology is helpless because it
does not have and cannot access the de-facto ownership information.
The
costs are displayed to illustrate that in terms of technique it is simple and
cheap to make such baseline survey, and it is not particularly “difficult”. The
largest cost lies in time and related costs of field work and subsequent manual
drafting. In the initial stage the mapping technique will also be manual /
analogue. When implemented at lager scale the challenge will be to use the GIS
technology to prepare the baseline property map and process acquired data into
related textual information.
In other
words, the problem of incomplete property registration is now experienced in
the form the extraordinary costs of establishing the baseline situation. There
is no other way to get the information on ownership than retrieving directly
from the owners.
The
pilot project will further explore technological issues of data management.
Further
activities
The
baseline survey provides the basis for a concrete assessment of the need for
land consolidation and interest of farmers.
The next
activity will be a meeting with farmers to present the findings of the baseline
survey – especially the map displaying the location of their respective lands.
Such
meeting would then try to conclude with the farmers whether to proceed into a
land consolidation negotiation phase in which case the conditions and general
rules for these activities will be explained.
View from the village