Abstract:
Productivity and sustainability of agricultural production activities are closely related to
compliance of agricultural structure with transportation, irrigation, drainage, machinery and
similar activities. Fragmented, scattered and irregular shaped plots prevent productive activities.
Under such conditions, lands are not directly reached, the time spend on road increases, machine
operations become difficult and there may be problems among neighboring facilities in access to
irrigation water. Although 5403-numbered law largely prevented land fragmentation in Turkey,
previous fragmentations, scatter and irregular plots already distorted agricultural structure. Land
consolidation has great contributions to sustainability of agricultural productivity and facilitates
in-field development services and land conservation activities. The irrigations without drainage
facilities may raise water table and end up with soil salinization.
In this study, effects of land consolidation and drainage projects implemented in 1993 in Konya-
Cumra-Turkmencamili on transportation, irrigation and soils were investigated. Land
consolidation prevented split of plots along the route of surface drainage canal (open canal) and
also eliminated any irregular plots. Land consolidation also eliminated the needs for
expropriations for transportation, irrigation and drainage services; allowed all plots directly
benefit from the road and transportation system, reduced number of plots and increased plot
sizes. With the drainage project implemented over the research site, moderately and slightly
saline lands were rehabilitated between the years 1993-2016 and reached to totally unsaline
standards and all these barren lands were reopened for cultural practices. |
