Income of Private Farms at the Turn of System Transition and European Integration

Abstract

The paper aims at analysing the level and the structure of agricultural income in Poland in the years 1995–2003 as well as attempting to establish major factors determining its changes within investigated period.
The analysis includes three main sources of data: national accounts, households’ budgets and general censuses conducted by the Central Statistical Office in the year 2002. Conclusions drawn from these data are convergent. The level of labour income in agriculture is dramatically low in comparison with charges imposed on the work of hired workers as well as persons self-employed outside agriculture. The level of the income neither gives the possibility nor incentives necessary to modernize farms (only one in ten farm is able to invest).
Unfavourable structure of agricultural prices was the main reason for huge decrease in agricultural income.
Conducted investigations indicate that agriculture is not able to become more competitive itself on the basis market mechanism.
Under such circumstances, high hopes are placed on transfers of union means within the frames of Common Agricultural Policy and structural funds of the EU.