The Changing Structure and Concentration of Agricultural Land Holdings in Estonia and Possible Threat for Rural Areas

Abstract

In most European countries, there has been a decrease in the number of farms, while the area of agricultural land has remained almost the same. This ongoing process of land concentration can affect Europe’s small farms and rural areas. The EU has acknowledged that the problem is serious and that, to solve it, it must be studied more closely. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to discuss changes in the agricultural sector from the aspect of land use, with emphasis on land concentration in Estonia, further scientific discussion about the effects of changes in land use on rural areas is encouraged. The study is carried out using two kinds of data sources: (1) statistical data from Eurostat, FAOSTAT and Statistics Estonia, (2) data from the Estonian Agricultural Registers and Information Board. The conclusion of the paper is that while the number of farms is going down, the average area of agricultural land use per farm is on the rise in Estonia. Agricultural land has been increasingly concentrated into the hands of corporate bodies. This study shows that there is a status of land concentration in Estonia that needs ongoing studies and a proper policy should be established to mitigate the impact of land concentration.

The RapeseedMap10 database: annual maps of rapeseed at a spatial resolution of 10 m based on multi-source data

“…The crop calendars originated from the United States Department of Agriculture, which only records rapeseed planting and harvest times for selected countries. The crop phenology field records in Germany were in situ observations from crop phenological records shared by the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) in Germany (Kaspar et al, 2014). The DWD provides field observations of crop phenological periods throughout Germany following the Biologische Bundesanstalt, Bundessortenamt, and Chemical Industry (BBCH) scale (Table 1).…”

“…The DWD provides field observations of crop phenological periods throughout Germany following the Biologische Bundesanstalt, Bundessortenamt, and Chemical Industry (BBCH) scale (Table 1). DWD records include the start and end dates of rapeseed flowering (d'Andrimont et al, 2020;Kaspar et al, 2014). Neither the two crop calendars nor the DWD records contain information on rapeseed peak flowering dates.…”

“…As a prerequisite to large-scale mapping, the phenology of rapeseed in different countries must be identified and delineated (Dong et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2020), but not enough observational records of rapeseed phenology are available on a large scale. In accordance with the DWD method of phenological observation (Kaspar et al, 2014), we created sample blocks with a radius of 10 km over rapeseed-producing areas of different countries and randomly sampled 10 rapeseed parcels per block. The rapeseed plots were identified by their phenological characteristics, which were obtained by visual interpretation and analysis of reference data, including high-resolution images available in S2 and Google Earth as well as spectral reflectance (red and green bands), spectral index (NDYI), and scattering coefficient profiles (VV and VH) from the S1/2 time series.…”

“…Previous studies and field observation records have indicated that the flowering period of rapeseed is approximately 30 d (d'Andrimont et al, 2020;Chen et al, 2019;Kaspar et al, 2014;She et al, 2015). Therefore, we divided each month into two time periods, with the 15th day serving as the dividing line.…”

Factors Determining the Development of Small Farms in Central and Eastern Poland

“…(2) introduced after World War II , the socialist "order" initiated by the land reform in the 1950s introduced numerous sanctions against family farms and motivated the creation of "State Farms", but the collectivisation was interrupted by local political changes and peasant farming remained present in Poland; (3) the 1990s with the profound economic reform from a socialist to a market system (1990)(1991)(1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)); (4) Poland's accession to the European Community in 2004 with mixed results (some good and some less desirable) [8][9][10][11]. Between 2005 and 2017, the number of farms decreased in Poland.…”