Sustainability of land use and land tenure systems: A case study of Polati district in Ankara province, Turkey
Yeşim Aliefendioğlu, Harun Tanrıvermiş
Practices related to the sustainable management of land seem to focus on solving problems related to land use as required by economic business operations and taking measures to conserve natural resources. Basic problems related to the use and conservation of land resources include land ownership, land use, forms of land tenure, use of fertile land for non-agricultural purposes, land degradation, fragmentation of land, change in land use and sustainability in the first place. Given the practices in many countries, it appears that countries resort to various means to eliminate the problems of their use of agricultural land. In addition to the observation of the change in land use in the mentioned framework, examination of land tenure systems and particularly, technical and economic measures for the protection of landless and small households seem to have gained importance and priority. Land tenure form, which expresses the legal scope of the relationship between agricultural land assets and those who operate it, is an important element in terms of agricultural land use and protection. In Turkey, the assets of the agricultural holdings remain inadequate in size, and the land property is very fragmented and scattered. According to Farmer Registration System (ÇKS) data, the average operational land of agricultural enterprises in 2002 was 5.9 parcel units, while this figure increased to 6.9 in 2015. It is also observed that in Turkey, where small-scale agricultural enterprises are widespread, the average size of enterprises is insufficient as well as the distribution of lands between the regions and the households is unbalanced. Due to increasing population pressure and inadequacy of non-agricultural employment opportunities, land fragmentation remains an increasing problem. In the period of 1991-2016, the number of enterprises according to tenure forms of agricultural land of rural households and the rate of distribution of the amount of land they operate are observed to vary considerably. Despite the fact that the total number of farmers has declined somewhat from 3.6 million in the mentioned period, there has not been any significant change in the average size of enterprise lands. It is observed on the other hand that while the share of the households that cultivated only their own land was 92.6% according to the results of the 1991 census of agriculture, this ratio decreased to as low as 70% in 2016 and that the share of those who rented external lands in addition to their own land increased from 5.8% to 26.4% in the same period and there seems to be no significant change in the tenure systems other than these two. According to these results, it is understood that the processing of agricultural land by the owners is still the most common type of agricultural enterprise in Turkey. In addition to this, was a decrease in the number of agricultural enterprises operating their own land and the share of the total area they operate in the period of 1991-2016. In the same period, there has been a significant increase in the amount of the enterprises that rent land besides their own land, which shows that the agricultural land is increasingly operated in the form of tenancy, co-operation or sharecropping. On the other hand, it is noticed that as the scale of land increases from low to large scale enterprises, the ratio of enterprises that cultivate only its own land decreases whereas that of those that operate its own and others’ lands increases. Especially in the period of 1991-2016, there was a visible increase in the ratio of enterprises, with a size of 5 hectares and more, operating both their own land and the land of others. Based on this, it can be concluded that medium- and large-scale enterprises are gradually increasing their size by operating the lands of smaller ones within other forms of tenure. As a result of the evaluation of the results of the agricultural census and the ÇKS data, it is revealed that land assets in...
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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