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of the soil and the number of people in the family registered in the civil registry
in August 1991. Using a per capita basis, each family received equal amounts of
arable and non-arable land, fruit trees, vineyards and olive trees. Scarce amount
of agricultural land in Albania (at average 0.22 ha per capita of population) and
high proportion of rural population (64%) were an argument in favour of the
implementation of the land law. Another argument was the long time and great
changes that had occurred in Albania during 1944-1990 which complicated the task
of identifying old land boundaries, documentation on previous property ownership,
etc. The most important aspect of this law, apart from its pivotal role in announcing
the new legal regime of land tenure, management and use, is that there has scarcely
been any law enacted over the last 12 years to address the afore-mentioned topics.
These, in turn, would have provided the detailed legal regime foreshadowed by
these provisions (Kelm,
2000
).
17.2 Main Land Tenure Issues
The agricultural structure comprises some large farms and a millions of micro-
farms, with an almost complete absence of intermediate-sized competitive, com-
mercial farms. The larger farms, sometimes covering thousands of hectares, are
operated by the state, commercial companies, private associations or cooperatives.
In contrast, farms less than 1 ha account for 70% or more of the total number of
farms in Albania. Most farms are subsistence farms that produce little for the mar-
ket, but they are often an important source of income and food security for many
rural residents. Assessing the effects of land privatization in Albania, it needs to
be underlined that this process was associated with two negative phenomena. On
one the hand, privatization has limited the farm size, while on the other hand it has
increased land fragmentation.
17.2.1 Land Fragmentation
Land fragmentation has been identified as one of the main obstacles to the develop-
ment of the agricultural sector in Albania. Law 7501 was drafted in order to ensure a
fair division of land among agricultural families. However, one of the ramifications
of this policy is highly fragmented land plots. Families own several non-contiguous
parcels spread over a wide territory which makes farming at an economic scale
next to impossible. As a result of this process of privatization, over 90% of agri-
cultural land is now in private ownership (Kelm,
2000
; Stanfield and Kukeli,
1995
).
The complete break-up of the agricultural collectives in Albania led to fragmenta-
tion of land ownership. In 2005, 440,000 farm families operated on approximately
1.8 million parcels. An average farm household possessed 1.5 ha, spread over
three to five parcels (Ministry of Agriculture and Food,
2007
; World Bank,
2003
,
2006
). The inactive land market with few land sales and rentals hinders land
consolidation.
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