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Abstract
The key question of this paper is why farmers in Kosovo leave land fallow when the total land
of their farms is rather small and households are rather large. In order to elicit some barriers to
land utilisation in Kosovo, the paper is based on a comprehensive survey carried out in 2005
investigating agricultural households’ perceptions of production and market conditions, and
employs several households and farm characteristics to empirically approximate the
significance of different factors for leaving land fallow and not using it for production
purposes. Three different econometric models are used expected to fit the data distribution.
All estimated model specifications show a statistical significance at a satisfactory level and no
severe signs of misspecification. The main determinants of the share of land left fallow by
farmers in Kosovo are economic: low profitability of farming and difficulty to access inputs.
The increase in incentives to farmers by improving market institutions up- and downstream is
one measure which could alleviate the barriers to land use. Larger arable areas decrease the
probability for fallow land. This emphasizes the need for land consolidation.