Attempts to measure sustainability of farms are usually based on indicators of a set of sustainability dimensions. According to the literature, analyses should (but quite often do not) cover not only the level, but also the relations between the sustainability dimensions, because we could expect complementarity, synergies or competition between the sustainability goals. The aim of this paper was to measure and assess the interdependencies between dimensions of farms’ sustainability. The research was carried out on 601 farms that participate in the Polish Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), with the use of standard FADN data supported by additional information from interviews. Based on many variables, economic, environmental, social, and composite sustainability indices were collected. From the correlation and correspondence analyses it was concluded that the farms reached the balance of all three dimensions simultaneously when the level of sustainability indices was medium, while a high level of sustainability in one dimension made it very difficult to reach a high level in the others. It was also emphasized that assessing farms’ sustainability with the use of a simple aggregation of variables may be not correct since sustainability goals may compete with each other.

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The goal of this paper is to explore intra-regional differences in factors determining land use. We built spatial regression tree models to assess the factors determining the share of agricultural area in municipalities of selected Polish metropolitan areas in 2010. The analyses are static, with the value of exogenous variables presented as an average for the longest possible period preceding the year 2010. We analysed the impact of socio-economic processes, natural conditions, and farming characteristics on the share of agricultural land in the surface area of particular municipalities in metropolitan areas. Based on the concept of economic rents that says that the way land is used is determined by economic rent, we have shown that the most important factor with an impact on the share of agricultural land is the number of enterprises per 10,000 people of working age. Other very important factors have been found to be the quality of environmental conditions of agricultural production, population density, and net migration. It was noted that with an increase in the rate of enterprises, as well as an increase in population density and net migration, the share of agricultural land falls, and a high quality of agricultural production comes with a relatively high share of agricultural land in the surface area of the municipalities analysed.3 of 22 was determined by rent, i.e., income from agricultural production reduced by production costs. He suggested that, where the natural features of the farm, such as climate, soil, topography, and other factors remain constant, the location of agricultural production was determined by the distance or costs of transportation to the urban market. With increasing distance from the town, the land will progressively be given up to products that are cheap to transport in relation to their value [30]. Though this theory is obsolete, its main assumptions about the very large role of location as a factor in land use changes should not be underestimated [31]. The direct approach applies the Thünian model of rural land-use allocation to the problem of urban-rural land conversion [32]. This was also explicitly articulated by Sinclair [33], who argued that, with urban sprawl, increasing competition for land comes from non-agricultural uses. He noted that, in many advanced industrialised parts of the world, the basic forces determining agricultural land use near urban areas are associated with urban expansion. Where these forces are in operation, the agricultural pattern quite often is one of increasing intensity with distance from the city. Non-agricultural uses which bring higher rents "push" agricultural production beyond cities [33].An urban location model linked to von Thünen's theory has been developed by Alonso [26]. His model can be regarded as the basis for household location choice [20]. Alonso's bid-rent theory explained the relationship between land prices and land use as follows: in a competitive land market, land-users seek to maximise their utility, land being purchased/rented ...

Dynamic land use changes in metropolitan areas are global phenomena. The influence of urbanisation processes on farmland is twofold: urban encroachments predominantly take place at the expense of farmland, and also result in farmland abandonment processes, especially in Central Eastern and Southern Europe. This paper analyses determinants of farmland abandonment in 280 municipalities situated in six selected Polish metropolitan areas. The analysis, which covers secondary statistical data as well as primary data collected via a survey among experts, applies the regression tree method. Within the six selected metropolitan areas nearly 9% of the farmland is permanently excluded from agricultural production (actual abandonment), plus another 11.5% is currently not being used for production (semi-abandonment). For actual abandonment, physical and economic sizes of farms, part-time farming, and soil quality constitute the most relevant determinants. Socio-economic variables play a more important role in explaining semi-abandonment than actual abandonment. Temporary exclusion of farmland from agricultural production is connected with urbanisation processes. Higher shares of built-up and urbanised areas, higher population densities, and positive migration rates result in higher shares of semi-abandonment. Naturally, areas characterised by agrarian fragmentation, where due to low agricultural incomes farmers more often decided to abandon agricultural production, were, in particular, subject to this process.

The increasing importance of large cities (metropolises) poses a range of challenges to the socio-economic functions of the rural and agricultural areas around them. One such challenge is pressure exerted on family-run farms to abandon agricultural activity and on people engaged in such activity to shift to other sectors. This may be a hindrance to successful succession on family farms. The aim of this paper is to present spatial variation in generational changes in farms located around large cities (metropolises) in Poland and to assess the factors affecting the scale of such changes. Special attention was paid to the importance of the location of farms relative to large cities. One innovative feature of the approach presented was to conduct an analysis of generational changes in the agricultural sector at the supra-local level along with an attempt to quantify the impact of large urban centers on that process. The empirical material based on which the conclusions were formulated included official statistics data and information made available by an institution engaged in the implementation of agricultural policy programs financed from European Union (EU) funds, i.e., young farmer payments (Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) pillar I) and measures “Setting up of young farmers” and “Early retirement” (CAP Pillar II). In the executed study, methods of descriptive and multivariate statistics, including regression trees, were used. It was found that socio-economic (exogenous) factors had a significant statistical impact on generational changes in farms. In areas with an attractive labor market and a high level of urbanization, a successful generational shift in farms occurred less often. Nonetheless, generational changes in the agriculture of the analyzed areas were relatively most strongly determined by endogenous factors linked with the economic potential of the farm. Farm characteristics (area of agricultural land and economic size) and the characteristics of managers, including in particular their education, were found to be more important than exogenous factors. In areas where large and economically strong farms dominated and the level of education among farmers was relatively high, generational changes were faster compared to other areas.

For at least 25 years, processes involving structural changes have been growing more and more intense in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, with these processes including a decline in the number of small farms. The main aim of this paper is to present the mechanisms involved in, as well as barriers to and costs preventing the exit of farms from agriculture, including those that make it difficult to transfer production resources which are being released to other companies. This research takes the form of an overview and is based on the output of new institutional economics, and on transaction cost and rent-seeking theories in particular. The most frequent difficulties encountered in the process of exit from farming include low profitability of production and the shortage of capital among potential buyers, while the lack of sellers’ financial resources and the necessity of incurring expenses related to preparing and finalising the sale of resources held by them (the actual transaction costs related to closing down farms) are frequently overlooked. The most important barriers preventing the complete liquidation of farms are the inherent transaction costs categorised as expenses, as well as the emotional costs and costs of alternatives, which are difficult to evaluate and estimate. The following notions are particularly helpful in explaining barriers to exit from farming: the concept of transaction costs and rent-seeking theory, which are both a part of the stream of thought of new institutional economics.

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Economic viability of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is the key requirement for additional social, environmental, and landscape functions within urban and peri-urban areas. However the rapid progress of urbanization drives the loss of farmlands to industrial, residential and other urban uses, and the decline of farms and population working in agriculture. Hence, the literature highlights the need to popularize new ideas and strategies of preserving and developing farms in urbanized areas.The main aim of this research is both to identify and assess determinants of success of farms located in urban and peri-urban areas. The key question that has arisen is: how do different adjustment strategies, locations and farm resources affect the success of farms? For this purpose a web survey was conducted among 199 professional urban and peri-urban farms in the Ruhr Metropolis (Germany). It is an old-industrialized polycentric urban agglomeration where agriculture has a comparably high level of significance in current land use. Analyses were conducted taking a resource-based view and using the classification tree method. The data indicate that farms which use various adjustment strategies are more successful. Elements of successful strategies, are include tourism services (mainly horse-riding) and direct marketing. Results further indicate that the effectiveness of those strategies (farm success) is mainly dependent upon a farms locations. Distance from the customer seem to be of utmost importance, because by minimizing transport costs, customers choose entities that have the most convenient location for them. By assessing farm success from a long-term perspective, it was noted that positive prospects of development apply mainly to full-time farmers who use appropriate adjustment strategies. In contrast, farms, which do not use any elements of strategies relating to customers from urban areas, seem to achieve success chiefly from having a relatively large surface area of farmland. 'lack of sufficient [economic] data' and emphasized 'the limited number