Farmland fragmentation and defragmentation nexus: Scoping the causes, impacts, and the conditions determining its management decisions

Theoretically, both land fragmentation and consolidation (defragmentation) approaches are considered as tools of land management. However, although a large literature about the relationships among land fragmentation, land consolidation, agriculture production and crops diversification concepts exists, less is known about the linkages among the conditions determining the decisions about the adoption of these tools in a given area. This poses a major dilemmatic challenge to policy makers about whether to devise policies in favour of fragmentation conservation or defragmentation. Therefore, this study identifies the conditions under which one could opt for land fragmentation or defragmentation policies by critically reviewing the documented causal-effects relationships between different fragmentation forms and defragmentation approaches. The end goal is the development of an explicit comprehensive model indicating when, where and why farmland fragmentation can be preserved or eliminated for food security purposes within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 1, 2, 12, 13 and 15). Following the rationalist theory, the study adopts an integrative concept-centric qualitative approach which builds on the analysis of existing literature and deductive logical reasoning to create new comprehensive scientific knowledge about a topic, as an informative guidance for future research and policies. Contrary to the majority of existing literature, this study posits that farmland fragmentation is not necessarily a problem. The scenarios and extent to which it becomes problematic or beneficial are dependent on a combination of a number of local specific external circumstances, ranging from biophysical, social, economic, political, technical to agro-ecological ones. For subsistence motives, labour, risks and conflicts management, climate change adaptation and household food security purposes, both physical in terms of internal and location, and tenure fragmentation of farmland in a given heterogeneous area under the subsistence and middle-income economies can be conserved either in combination with or without agriculture intensification programs. On the other hand, both physical and tenure fragmentation of farmland under homogenous agro-ecological conditions, and physical fragmentation under heterogeneous agro-ecological conditions and strong complex economies can be revoked for the purposes of improving farm efficiency, food quantity and supply, and food security. We therefore argue that any policy to adapt the extent of farmland fragmentation should consider both the benefits and costs of such intervention in relation to the specific local context.