INFLUENCE OF LAND CONSOLIDATION ON THE COMPETITIVENESS OF CROATIAN AGRICULTURE

Small fragmented agricultural plots and small-size households are the basic features of agricultural land (particularly of family farms) in Croatia. Family farms that own approximately 80% of total Croatian agricultural land are the most prevailed part in production agricultural structure. More than 70% of those farms hold less than 3 ha of land which is still highly fragmented. Among the farms that own more than 3 ha of land, there is only a few of them that are solid and market orientated with capability to be competitive to import producers. Agricultural Census in 2003 encompassed 449,896 agricultural households and 1,364 legal entities that are engaged in agriculture. The size of utilized agricultural land area for all comprised units is 2.4 ha in average. Agricultural households use 1.9 ha of utilized agricultural area in average, while legal entities 159.2 ha in average. Competitiveness analysis of the major Croatian agricultural products has been conducted within the project „"Competitiveness in Agriculture and EU accession - A Strategy for Croatian Agriculture". It shows that Croatian agriculture is enough productive only in maize, oil rape seed, apple and eggs production.