Large Farms in EU Countries with Different Levels of Economic Development in 2005–2016

Abstract

The higher growth rate of labour costs in non-agricultural sectors and prices of means of production for agriculture from the prices of sales of agricultural products in countries with a market economy is causing a decrease in the unit profitability of agricultural production. Farmers who want to earn a satisfactory income must increase the scale of production, mainly by increasing the farm area. The research selected two groups of countries differing in the level of economic development determined by the value of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The justification for this choice was the existing dependence of the economic power of farms on the level of the national economy of the countries studied. The first group of countries with a high GDP included: Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland; the second included Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. The analysis covered changes in the average area of farms, share of farms with an area of: 30 ha of agricultural land and larger in the total number of farms in land use, employment and standard production in the surveyed years 2005 and 2016. In countries in the 1st and 2nd group the average area of farms and the proportion of area-wide farms in land use and production had increased in the subsequent period. In the majority of the countries analysed, the proportion of farms with an area of 100 ha and larger in production exceeded 50%.