FAO offers online training course on land consolidation and land banking

Better understanding and applying two key land policy instruments has become easier through a free online learning course, launched today at a webinar. The virtual course was developed by the FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia and the FAO elearning Academy, in partnership with universities and land consolidation agencies across the region. It explores the core concepts of land consolidation and land banking, provides detailed guidance on the key approaches, and highlights real-world examples to support its application.

The programme was designed to support project implementation at the country level and to educate future land consolidation professionals, ultimately improving the efficiency and sustainability of farming.

Land consolidation is a tool that helps countries in which farmers suffer from having too many and too small plots, which increases the costs and environmental footprint of their activities. FAO – and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure – promotes land consolidation as a way for farmers in an area to collaborate in designing a new layout for their farms. This can be combined with land banking, where the state already owns agricultural land or purchases it from private owners and can then transfer this land to participating farmers to allow them to enlarge their small family farms.

“One of the main capacity-building challenges in land consolidation and land banking is the persistent gap between academic training and the integrated skills required in real projects,” said Morten Hartvigsen, FAO Land Tenure Officer.

“Professionals are often trained in silos – law, land surveying, land valuation or agronomy – while effective land consolidation demands that these competencies come together in practice. This e-learning course directly responds to that challenge by providing an integrated, practice-oriented learning pathway that helps institutions and practitioners build the technical and administrative capacity needed for implementing sustainable land consolidation programmes.”

The launch webinar featured voices from several countries with experience in applying land consolidation and land banking, including Finland, North Macedonia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

Online course uniting theory and practice

In recent years, FAO has supported 13 countries in Eastern Europe in introducing land consolidation instruments and developing national land consolidation programmes. Training and capacity development – key components of these initiatives – are prerequisites for the smooth rollout of any sustainable land consolidation programme.

To this end, the e-learning course was created to help a broad range of actors (professionals, university students, and technical and project staff) understand and implement effective land consolidation and land banking practices and support them at the national level.

Using experiences gathered in Europe and Central Asia, the course explores relevant policy, legal and institutional frameworks for land consolidation and land banking and offers detailed guidance on key approaches, implementation methodologies, guiding principles and safeguards. Additionally, concrete examples help bridge academic knowledge with practical application.

The course is available in English. Upon successful completion, participants will receive a certificate and a digital badge.