Analyzing Spatiotemporal Development of Organic Farming in Poland

Abstract

Organic farming is one of the most widely known sustainable models of agricultural production. Success in eco-agriculture also depends greatly on agri-environmental, territorial, economic, social, institutional and spatial conditions. Polish eco-farming is very regionally dispersed and diversified. Regarding the important contribution of organic farming, a better understanding of how this phenomenon develops and which factors affect its spatial distribution can be influential for policymakers in planning strategies that pursue sustainable development objectives in rural areas. This paper assesses the development and analyses the spatial distribution of organic farming in Polish LAU-2. The country’s eco-agriculture was mapped and defined using a synthetic measure, described by 27 sub-measurements of ecological crop cultivation, animal maintenance and eco-production. The local spatial patterns (direction, scale, and range) of organic farming were detected by spatial autocorrelation measurements. The analysis was conducted for the period 2014–2020. Possible external and internal determinants of this spatial dispersion were also defined. The results indicate that the distribution and spread of organic farming in Poland are related to public support, institutional regulations, social considerations, environmental concerns, the local job market and spatial dependencies.

Considering the development of organic farming in Poland at different territorial aggregation levels

“…The minimum numerical value in range was found, while having ignored the 0 value. Source: own elaboration in ArcMap v. 10.6. production, it was found that the CMOF is low in areas of intensive production (particularly in the south-western and western parts of Poland), which confirms the previous results (Früh-Müller et al, 2019;Luty, 2017;Antczak, 2021). However, the disparities in CMOF are higher at lower levels of data aggregation, indicating increasing local concentration and specialization of a particular eco-agriculture line in certain LAU-2 units (Table 2, Fig.…”

“…The timeframe of the analysis was narrowed down to the above years due to the uniform way databases are built and regularly updated at the local (LAUs) level, containing similar descriptions of organic farm features, unified production categories and the potential impact of support obtained from EU funds in the framework of the Rural Development Programme for the years 2014-2020 at the production level. These indicators are reconstructed and produced in accordance with the relevant literature about the measuring track progress toward organic farming (e.g., MacRae et al, 2007;Antczak, 2021, Popovici et al, 2021 and with proposals of organic agriculture policies (EC, 2019a). Based on a farming system typology (Andersen et al, 2007), subjective measures and qualitative assessment, the individual factors were classified into four subgroups (Table 1).…”

Key economic sectors for green job creation in Poland – an empirical analysis

“…The reason for these decreases is the employment structure in Poland inherited from the times of the centrally-planned economy (Usabiaga et al, 2022). Therefore, in the context of green jobs, the employment in section A should be analyzed separately, especially due to the relatively high share of agricultural workers in total employment, the significant role of agriculture in the Polish economy and the still-small share of ecological crops (3.5%) in agricultural production compared to the EU-27 average (which is 8.5%) (Antczak, 2021).…”

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“…В результате были выявлены области с неиспользованным потенциалом и области, в которых фонды используются не в полной мере, учитывая их экологический потенциал (Wiśniewski et al, 2021). Кроме того, пространственные различия в развитии органического сельского хозяйства в Польше также ярко показаны в недавних исследованиях Э. Антчака (Antczak, 2021) и М. Кобылинской (Kobylińska, 2021.…”