Title: Ageing and Rural Development in Central and Eastern Europe: The awkward problem of the land

Abstract: Unlike in western and northern Europe, ownership of agricultural land constitutes a significant source of household income for a large minority of the population in central and eastern Europe.    Whether land is owned outright, co-owned or held in, so far undivided, shares, mass private control over rural land exerts a powerful influence over the direction of the rural economy, and arguably more importantly, the future sustainability of many rural settlements.   The combination of ageing and shrinking populations in the rural areas and the seemingly irreversible reduction in the agricultural workforce have placed many villages in a condition of existential crisis.   The argument in this paper is that the current structure of landownership creates serious development puzzles that are both specific to the post-socialist region, but also constitute so called wicked policy problems.  They involve the need to ensure reliable registers of ownership, but also to counter the problem of reluctant heirs and the wider shortcomings of the small holding sector.   Both national governments and the EU have proved largely unwilling to acknowledge the scale of the problem or to devise effective instruments for countering some of the immediate negative effects, whether this is abandonment of farmland or the continued proliferation of informal arrangements concerning land use.   This paper describes some select features of the land question and compares existing policy responses as well as more bottom-up responses.  The argument will be proposed that without the intervention of credible local institutions to steer the rural land market towards larger farm sizes and fewer small holdings, the problems of rural sustainable development in central and eastern Europe will only get worse. 

Department für Sozioökonomie