Small Farms in Poland and Czechia: Development Paths

Abstract

The aim of this study was to identify the long-term tendencies regarding the land use in farms of different sizes in Poland and Czechia, with special focus on small-scale farms. The article answers the question about functioning of small farms in Poland and Czechia, as they represent different structures of land use among farms. On the one hand, the land fragmentation in Poland, and on the other hand, domination of large farms in Czechia, with a lower share of small farms. To achieve the aim, the study used data from the Farm Structure Survey (FSS) and Agricultural Census (2010, 2020) from Eurostat for six periods (2005, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2020) and selected data for recent years from the World Bank database. In the period under analysis, it can be observed that there is a significant decline in the number of small farms both in Poland and Czechia, while the decrease in utilized agricultural area was smaller. Hence, the average area of farm increased which helped them to improve the land productivity, while increasing the standard output per hectare of utilized agricultural area. The analysis showed that there are two different models of the position of small farms in the Polish and Czech agricultural sectors, however, some positive and desired tendencies occur in both systems.