Another village benefits from land consolidation in North Macedonia

The qualified majority of the land owners in the village of Logovardi, located in Pelagonija, a region in the south-west of North Macedonia, adopted a plan on the re-allotment of agricultural land parcels in the Logovardi land consolidation project area. After the villages of Egri, Trn and Dabjani, this is the fourth majority-based land consolidation plan adopted under the European Union-funded MAINLAND project, co-funded by FAO and implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Economy.

The land consolidation area in Logovardi stretches over 399 hectares (ha) of agricultural land owned by 388 landowners. With the adoption of the land re-allotment plan, the number of land parcels will be more than halved – from 789 to 364 parcels – and, in parallel, the average parcel size will double to 1.1 ha compared to 0.5 ha average before consolidation. The new land parcels will have regular shapes and better access to the agricultural infrastructure, enabling more efficient and competitive agricultural production.

“Thanks to the MAINLAND project, our land will finally be better organized, improving farm productivity,” said Dragi Djumkovski, a farmer from Logovardi. According to him, being productive and competitive was impossible with the fragmented and small parcels.
With the adopted re-allotment plan, Djumkovski’s 13 land parcels scattered in remote locations across the fields will be consolidated in three large, regularly-shaped parcels with easier access to agricultural infrastructure. On average, the size of his parcels will reach 2.2 ha, which will allow greater farming efficiency and opportunities to modernize and scale up agricultural production.
In addition to improving the land structure for agricultural development, the land consolidation project in Logovardi and in the neighbouring village of Optichari where the re-allotment is under finalization, has broader objectives. Being the first multi-purpose land consolidation effort in the country, the reallocation of land also supports large infrastructure construction. This is a win-win solution for both the farmers and the whole country.

As the next step, the MAINLAND project will support the registration of the newly formed land parcels into the Real Estate Cadastre and their staking out on the field in the coming months.

3 May 2022, Logovardi, North Macedonia