Agricultural History Review, Volume 73 Part 1 (2025), pp. 96–118

This article investigates changes in attitudes towards land consolidation with multifunctional concerns (in mind), at the end of the twentieth century, in northeast Belgium. While previous research discusses the development of regulations for land reform, influenced by European agricultural policy and socioec-onomic changes, it fails to grasp what such changes meant on the ground and for those involved in negotiating consolidation. We therefore analyse and compare the working mechanisms of two land consolidations in the 1980s–2000s, adopting a local perspective, and gain insights into policy dynamics between local parties. We found that negotiated decisions changed as relations between agriculture and other rural actors and functions of the countryside profoundly altered. Consequently, more consid-eration was given, in both studied cases, to recreation and the ecological protection and improvement of flood-plain environments, a cause strongly advocated by local nature associations whose influence grew steadily.