Determinants of Farmers' Willingness for Land Consolidation in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
Abstract
Land fragmentation is one of the main hurdles that restricts farmers
from technology use for enhancing agricultural production especially in
developing countries. The farmers are even now at threat of further
fragmentation of their lands in the future due to sharing system of
lands among the heirs. This research, attempted to find out determinants
of small holding farmers’ willingness for land consolidation in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Pakistan. The primary data was collected
through semi-structured questionnaire from randomly selected 200 farmers
from Charsadda, Sawabi and Nowshera districts of (KPK) Province .
Chi-square test and Binary logistic regression model were used to
identify determinants of farmers’ willingness for land consolidation.
Farmers’ reported main reasons in favor of willingness were benefit of
compact land than scattered parcels, increased production, better
management of land and ease of transporting inputs. Conversely, reasons
against willingness for mutual swapping included farmers’ sentimental
attachments to their lands, lack of proper compensation mechanism,
differences in value of land and renting-out land parcels. Among
determinants of willingness included distance of land parcel, land
holding size, number of land parcels, irrigated land area and
participation in agriculture related trainings. The study suggests
arrangement of seminars and workshops for farmers in their own rural
settings for awareness regarding land consolidation, a better
compensation mechanism to come up on mutual exchange of land parcels
with uneven prices and land parcels of different irrigation methods.