ABSTRACT
The family farm is the basic socioeconomic unit of land settlement. In the settlement model it also becomes the basic spatial element, aspects of which are determined by the size and quality of the land resources. In a nucleated settlement, the farmstead becomes a spatial element that influences village layout, distances to work and services, infrastructure costs, as well as social interaction and the efficiency of the farm itself. The allocation of land resources to the family farm deserves special examination because of the interrelationship between the size of holdings and physical distances. Theories of spatial organization are usually based on the principle of minimizing distances and maximizing the utility of points and areas within a given structure. External distances can be minimized not only by reducing farm size, but also by concentrating plots of equal soil quality and crop suitability into large blocks of land.
