Commercial Farms in Polish Metropolitan Areas: Changes in Production Factors

Abstract

Both the literature and economic practice increasingly note differences in adaptation processes taking place in farms operating in the immediate proximity of large cities and other commercial farms. In areas where urbanisation and metropolisation processes are ongoing, agriculture not only faces a number of obstacles, but also many opportunities, and as a result processes of structural change are very rapid here. The identification of tendencies to changes in resources of farm production factors may constitute a basis for developing very useful research in Poland aimed at the introduction of appropriate development strategies for urban and peri-urban agriculture. The aim of this paper is to present directions of changes in production factors of commercial farms operating in six selected Polish metropolitan areas (MA). Detailed analyses covered 189 farms in six Polish metropolitan areas. The farms researched from 2004 to 2016 provided continuous data to the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). The comparative material used in the analyses covered 1665 farms outside of metropolitan areas. The analyses of commercial farms’ production capacity have shown that farms in MA inner zones (in immediate proximity of the city core) in 2004 possessed larger average resources of land, labour and capital. Between 2004 and 2016, production capacities of farms in the inner and outer zones of the MA evened out to a large extent. However, their average potential was still bigger compared to farms outside of metropolitan areas. Observation of ongoing changes has confirmed that the biggest percentage of farms reducing land, labour and capital resources was in the inner zone, which confirms the existence of barriers to their further development, i.e. limited supply of land and high opportunity cost of labour, among other things. It seems that these farms have to look for alternative development paths, namely they should focus on diversification and the development of non-agricultural services.