time, transportation costs, and limitations on access; operational problems such as an inability to use certain equipment, greater difficulty with pest control and supervision; and social externalities associated with the need for extensive road networks and associated land loss (Simons 1987). However, at low levels of mechanization or if credit and insurance are difficult to access, the benefits in terms of risk diversification of having a portfolio of plots with different attributes and in various locations or smoothing out of seasonal labor requirements (Fenoaltea 1976) may outweigh these costs(McCloskey 1975) . Indeed, early studies assessing impacts of land fragmentation in developing countries such as India (Heston and Kumar 1983) or Ghana and Rwanda (Blarel _et al._ 1992) suggest that productivity losses may be modest and benefits substantial.<sup>7</sup> This is consistent with the notion that fragmentation will become a constraint to productivity only if it impedes the ability to use machinery in areas with decreasing agricultural population (Bentley 1987). If this is the case, intervention to overcome the associated collective action problem may indeed become desirable.

Evidence from developed countries where publicly sponsored consolidation programs, often linked to a range of other environmental or developmental initiatives, were found to have been associated with high economic returns, e.g., some 40 percent in France (Simons 1987), supports this notion. More recent evidence of consolidation providing significant benefits is also available from Turkey and the Czech Republic where the size of land holdings and the number of parcels were, with more than 10 ha and up to 50 plots owner, large (Sklenicka 2006). For land consolidation initiatives to be sustainable, the conditions that gave rise to fragmentation in the first instance, e.g. high population growth with equal shares of different land types given to all heirs, are either no longer in place, e.g. because workers are joining the nonfarm sector in large numbers (Platteau and Baland 2001). Alternatively, institutional arrangements such as land markets -possibly with a right of first refusal by neighbors- will need to be in place to deal with them (van Dijk and Kopeva 2006). Where this was not the case, consolidation programs -in some cases implemented at considerable cost- were unsustainable and the situation soon reverted to what had been in place previously. Recent pilot consolidation efforts in Eastern Europe hold a number of additional lessons. First, achievements in terms of the number of land transactions triggered by such programs remained below expectations, partly because part of fragmentation had been voluntary and the programs did not deal with broader land policy issues.<sup>8</sup> Second, efforts need to include all relevant stakeholders and ideally be integrated into a broader plan for territorial development.<sup>9</sup> Finally, to ensure sustainability and continued adjustment through subsequent

> 7 More recent evidence from India shows that plot sizes too small to allow mechanized cultivation significantly reduce agricultural productivity (Foster and Rosenzweig 2010), although this is less an issue of fragmentation than of a general decline in farm sizes. 8 In a consolidation pilot undertaken in 2007 to 2009 in 6 Moldovan villages with 11,500 ha and 27,000 parcels, participation was about 40%. Partly because it involved a systematic review of the land registry, this led to a reduction in the number of parcels per owner from 3.74 to 3.23, an increase in average parcel size from 0.45 to 0.59 ha, and an increase in the mean area per holding from 2.21 to 2.93 ha, largely by owners selling plots that were too small or inconveniently located (AGREX 2011). 9 In the Moldova case referred to above, an inability to touch both small paths between parcels which were located in public land and would have required a formal auction and to resolve inheritance issues significantly reduced the project‟s impact.

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