Land consolidation is an important stage for agriculture and rural development. During the land reform, parcels of irrational size and shape were formed, which became difficult to cultivate efficiently. In essence, land consolidation projects must primarily be developed in areas with large, viable farms, and land parcels forming land holdings are not compact, distant from each other and from centres. Land consolidation projects have been under development for many years, but it is appropriate to pay attention to the expediency of implemented projects. Land consolidation goals and procedures vary from country to country, as the development of this procedure in each country is determined by historical trends, culture, traditions and land consolidation legislation. Many of those who have analysed this topic emphasize the need for consolidation, but it is very important that landowners understand the importance of this process and make sure of its opportunities and benefits. Land consolidation must be designed so that the benefits of the project are higher than the results of the conversion works before the project. The purpose of this article is to compare land consolidation projects which were prepared in different areas of Lithuania. Two objects of the research in which land consolidation projects had been carried out and implemented in 2013 were selected, where the number of sites in units decreased: 41.8% in one project and 28% in the other. Changes in parcel configuration were also noticeable, when in one of the projects analysed even 92 per cent of land parcels have become regular − close to rectangular − shapes. The average size of land parcels in this project increased from 5.32 ha to 9.14 ha.

As result of land reform in Russian Federation the public administration of agricultural land has been totally transformed. Land reform was carried out in order to solve problems in the sphere of agriculture, housing construction, ecology, creating a plurality of land ownership forms, introducing land use payments, etc. The decision to cancel monopoly of state ownership in land and to create institution of private property was made. The land redistribution projects for each farm were made, where stock of shares, stock of land redistribution and stock of land administered by previous soviet village councils was represented. The example of the Samara region was used to develop mechanisms for transfer of public land to private ownership. Currently, the situation with use of the land in many agricultural enterprises can be considered as unsatisfactory due to unsystematic economic activity − there are no or are not implemented scientifically based crop rotations, natural soil fertility is not taken into account, there is no modern cartographic material indicating the size of the fields, degree of slope and degree of erosion. Significant deterioration of the agro-ecological situation and the spread of negative processes on arable land require changes in national land policy and development of comprehensive measures to organize rational use of land. In the near future, a significant modernization of national and federal land legislation is planned, which will affect all subjects of the Russian Federation in terms of the management and use of agricultural land.