The idea of ranking in setting priorities for land consolidation works

Functioning conditions of agriculture are closely related to the spatial structure of rural areas, which is one of the most important factors influencing profitability of agricultural production. Essential changes in rural space can be effected in a short period of time only as a result of land management works. The scope of these works is limited because the financial resources are often insufficient. As a result, scarce funds must be distributed in such a way as to ensure their flow to where they are mostly needed or where the return on investment, in the form of improvement of farming conditions, would be the highest [Blaz et al. 2010, Gawronski 2005]. The article presents the idea of creating multicriteria ranking of surveying sections of Malopolskie Voivodeship aimed at identifying areas that should be the subject of land management works in the first place. It is suggested that to achieve this goal databases of rural areas in the Malopolska region, including data from the descriptive and graphic part of the land and building register as well as digital orthophotomap. Voivodeship authorities, having access to the results of the proposed calculation process, could play an important role in programming the land management works.