Strategic state projects and land consolidation: case of Rail Baltica project

Abstract

In many European countries land consolidation has been under way for more than a century in order to improve the use and cultivation of agricultural land and living conditions in the countryside. It is a special process of land management, when complex land plots are being restructured, the formation of rational farmland use, the improvement of their structure and the development of the necessary rural infrastructure [1]. Land fragmentation is not only a consequence of land reform or division of land. Linear infrastructure projects also can divide land into several plots and reduce land by the compulsory acquisition for the public's needs. Currently, Rail Baltica, an important railway project for all three Baltic states, requiring an acquisition of 1,300 private and public land plots (Lithuania), is ongoing [2]. This will determine the partitioning of land parcels into smaller plots and their arrangement on both sides of the infrastructure, which will result in economically inefficient farming