Summary:

Excessive fragmentation of farm grounds constitutes one of the biggest ob-stacles for rational and profitable agricultural production. Identification of the areas where this phenomenon occurs with great intensity is an essential element of the identification process of areas which are accepted for the consolidation work.
The presented article introduces a proposal with a new approach to the evaluation of lot fragmentation in rural areas by abandoning the use of the average lot area surface in a given area in favour of the indicator which comprises both the area structure of farms and the average lot area in individual specified area groups of individual farms. The proposed indicator precisely identifies the areas which qualify for realization of the consolidation work by the possibility of the differentiating influence of individual farms on the value of the final synthetic indicator. Calculations connected with determination of the proposed indicator have been carried out for 81 registered areas which belong to Dąbrowski administrative district (Małopolska voivodeship).