Livestock Farming and potential problems of implementing the Nitrate Directive at the farm level in Poland

Contents

Introduction

1. Characteristics of Livestock Farming sector in Poland.

2. Typical production patterns on small farms.

3. Costs of constructing dung plates and installing storage tanks for slurry.

4.   Income effect of installing animal wastes storage facilities.

5. Reflections on practicalities of implementing the Nitrate Directive.

Introduction

The importance of agricultural sector in Poland for the national economy is gradually decreasing in terms of its contribution to the GDP, falling down from 14,8% in 1980 to 3,3% in the year 2000. However, due to the amount of agricultural land (18,4 mln ha, of which grassland consists about 22%), high employment (about 28% of active population) and volume of agricultural production economic significance of the sector, as well as scale of economic, social or ecological problems, which Polish Agriculture creates can not be questioned.

One of the specific features of Polish agriculture is the co-existence of large scale, formerly state owned farms, and small scale family farming, characterised by a small average farm size (7,0 ha).

The total number of farms with the minimum size of 1 ha and registered as active in agricultural production in Poland was 1 791 mln in the year 2000. The majority of farms belong to the cluster of 1-3 ha of land (659,0 thousand), consisting about 37% of the population. However, their share in the use of agricultural land is only 9,7%. Also their contribution to the agricultural produce market supply is very low. The smallest farms should be considered as subsistence farms mainly. 19% of the total number of farms in 1996 were farms larger than 10 ha, but their share in agricultural land exceeded 60%. A trend for increase of the share of larger farms in the agricultural land use might be observed in Poland, although process of changes in farms’ structure is slow.

Farms of different size are unequally distributed regionally (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Average family farm size (1996)

Small farms are located mostly in the southern parts of the country. On the opposite, an average farm size is the largest in the North and Northwestern parts of Poland.

In the cropping structure significant shifts have occurred in the last decade – share of cereals increased considerably (up to 70% of the arable land in 1999), mainly at the expense of potatoes and fodder crops. This feature is linked strongly with changes in the livestock sector of Polish farming. The decrease in the area of potatoes was mainly a result of changes in the pig feeding system, which switched to cereals and purchased concentrates. The decline in the cultivation of fodder crops was due to the reduced number of livestock as a consequence of low profitability in this sector in the early nineties, but also due to the productivity increase, especially in the dairy sector.