This paper is meant to determine trends in changes in the organisation of fruit production at the beginning of the 21st century. It focuses on the determination of those trends as well as their circumstances. The analysis of changes in the organisation of fruit production was made using Grójec poviat as an example. The accession of Poland to the European Union resulted in the intensification of processes of specialisation and concentration in agriculture, due to which the area occupied by orchards started to grow systematically. With the growing area and the intensification of fruit crops, quantities of fruits produced also increased. Currently, Poland is one of the biggest fruit manufacturers in Europe, with Grójec poviat being the biggest producer in Poland.

In the early 21st century, orchard fruit-growing is one of Poland's most rapidly-growing branches of agriculture. The rate and direction of this process of development have obviously been under the fundamental influence of an European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) binding upon Poland since 2004. A series of changes concerning orchard fruit-growing have been ushered in this way, with production intensifying and spatial reorganisation taking place. The work described here has thus sought to determine changes in the level of output achieved by fruit-growing, as well as changes in the distribution of orchards, during the time over which the CAP's instruments have been exerting their influence on Polish agriculture. Research first concentrated on identification of the key CAP instruments capable of influencing the development of orcharding in Poland. Analyses were then carried out in respect of changes in the level of fruit production and the area devoted to orchard cultivation. Impacts on production, including those manifested in increased exports of fresh fruit, are shown to have helped Poland maintain position on European and world markets, with consequences including an increased area assigned to the growing of the most in-demand fruit (i.e. apples and raspberries), in peripheral regions especially. This can therefore be thought to reflect both growing specialisation in farming, and a way of maintaining some economic vitality in rural areas far from large urban agglomerations.

The main sources of waste generation are: industry, municipal sector, and agriculture. Municipal waste is solid and liquid waste that arise in households, public utilities (trade, services, handicrafts) and municipal services (e.g. street cleaning and maintenance of green areas). The main aim of this paper are the analysis of the flow of municipal solid waste in Łódź Metropolitan Area, its composition, presentation of the process towards a more selective waste system, and the extraction of biodegradable waste from the MSW. The article is based on a report prepared within the Horizon 2020 project REPAiR “Resource Management in Peri-urban Areas: Going Beyond Urban Metabolism”.

inStytut geOgrafii i przeStrzennegO zagOSpOdarOWania pOlSka akademia nauk www.igipz.pan.pl kOmiSja ObSzaróW WiejSkich pOlSkie tOWarzyStWO geOgraficzne www.ptgeo.org.pl