Assessing the Effects of Land Consolidation: Farmers’ Perspective

Land consolidation is a pivotal element in rural settlement planning globally and specifically in Turkey. Evaluating the efficacy of land consolidation initiatives and incorporating diverse approaches in distinct countries and regions are imperative. This assessment becomes particularly crucial in charting the course for future land consolidation endeavors, wherein an understanding of farmers’ knowledge levels and perspectives significantly enhances success rates. This research focuses on evaluating land consolidation studies conducted in 2011 in three settlements—Alhan, Çulhan, and Dereköy—located in the Yenipazar district of Aydın province, Turkey. Data were collected using face-to-face interviews with 296 enterprise owners chosen through the stratified random sampling method across the three villages. The analysis utilized CHAID (Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detection) analysis, a decision tree model, to comprehensively evaluate the interview results. The findings derived from this study offer crucial insights into the regional farmers’ perspectives on land consolidation projects, contributing valuable data to the academic discourse on rural development and settlement planning. It has been revealed that farmers’ education level, land holdings, and age have significant effects on their views on land consolidation projects. It has also been determined that the positive perspectives of farmers in the region on land consolidation projects continue to be positive after the project is completed. Moreover, more than half of the farmers who participated in the survey reported that their living standards have changed positively.