THE EFFECTS OF LAND CONSOLIDATION PROJECTS ON AGRICULTURAL INFRASTRUCTURE: THE CASE OF KARAMAN-SALUR PROJECT

Abstract

Agricultural lands are decreasing and fragmentizing day by day owing to reasons such as migrations caused by increasing population, industrialization, faulty urbanization policies, laws concerning inheritance and commercial laws. It is a vital issue to improve agricultural infrastructure by consolidating lands especially in countries like Turkey where agricultural lands are dispersed and multi-part. In order for agricultural output to be increased, existing agricultural lands need to be reorganized so as to produce crops economically. Implementation of land consolidation projects has become a necessity to improve agricultural lands. In this study, the land consolidation project implemented in the village of Salur in the province of Karaman between the years 2009 and 2010 was investigated. The new situation that arose after the implementation of the project and the situation before the project were compared and contrasted in terms of the number of parcels, average parcel size and the parcels' accessibility to transportation routes. According to this, the results of the reorganization of the agricultural plots after the land consolidation projects were presented through numerical data.