Does land fragmentation affect farm performance? A case study from Brittany, France

• Land fragmentation may influence farmers’ decisions and hence impact farm performance.
• We test whether this impact is positive or negative for Brittany, France, in 2007.
• In general, land fragmentation is found to reduce all dimensions of farm performance.
• However, findings confirm that a wide set of fragmentation measures should be used.
• The private benefits of reducing fragmentation depend on the indicator considered.

Agricultural land fragmentation is widespread around the world and may affect farmers’ decisions and therefore have an impact on the performance of farms, in either a negative or a positive way. We investigated this impact for the western region of Brittany, France in 2007. To do so, we regressed a set of performance indicators on a set of fragmentation descriptors. The performance indicators (production costs, yields, revenue, profitability, technical and scale efficiency) were calculated at the farm level, using Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) data. By contrast, due to limits in the available data, the fragmentation descriptors were calculated at the municipality level, using data from the cartographic field pattern registry (RPG). The various fragmentation descriptors enabled not only the traditional number and average size of plots, but also their scattering in the geographical space, to be taken into account. The analysis brought several findings. Firstly, it is relevant to consider the various dimensions of LF when studying its impact on farm performance, in particular shape and distance considerations. Secondly, in all cases but one, the effect of the various LF descriptors on performance indicators conform to expectations, that is to say LF increases production costs and decreases yields, revenue, profitability and efficiency. Thirdly, with a simple simulation we have shown that the benefits from reducing fragmentation may differ with respect to the improved LF dimension and the performance indicator considered. Hence, when setting up consolidation programs, it may be crucial for policy-makers to first decide which performance dimension they aim at favouring in order to choose the most efficient way to do so. Finally, from a methodological point of view, our results support the relevance of using descriptors of LF at the municipality level as a proxy when farm level LF descriptors are not available.