Determinants of Farmers' Willingness for Land Consolidation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Land fragmentation is one of the main hurdles that restricts farmers from technology use for enhancing agricultural production especially in developing countries. The farmers are even now at threat of further fragmentation of their lands in the future due to sharing system of lands among the heirs. This research, attempted to find out determinants of small holding farmers’ willingness for land consolidation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province of Pakistan. The primary data was collected through semi-structured questionnaire from randomly selected 200 farmers from Charsadda, Sawabi and Nowshera districts of (KPK) Province . Chi-square test and Binary logistic regression model were used to identify determinants of farmers’ willingness for land consolidation. Farmers’ reported main reasons in favor of willingness were benefit of compact land than scattered parcels, increased production, better management of land and ease of transporting inputs. Conversely, reasons against willingness for mutual swapping included farmers’ sentimental attachments to their lands, lack of proper compensation mechanism, differences in value of land and renting-out land parcels. Among determinants of willingness included distance of land parcel, land holding size, number of land parcels, irrigated land area and participation in agriculture related trainings. The study suggests arrangement of seminars and workshops for farmers in their own rural settings for awareness regarding land consolidation, a better compensation mechanism to come up on mutual exchange of land parcels with uneven prices and land parcels of different irrigation methods.