Polish croP farms * at the background of farms from selected countries abstract the paper presents an assessment of organisation and economics of Polish crop farms, and their competitiveness has been defined against analogous farms from hungary, the czech republic, slovakia and Germany. the assessment of researched farms was made on the basis of the Polish FaDN and europe-wide FaDN data of 2010-2012, bearing in mind economic size of farms expressed in eUr thousands of standard output (so). the research used comparative method. competitiveness of the researched farms was defined with the competitiveness ratio, which illustrates the relation between farm income and the sum of costs of using own factors of production (labour, land and capital). research results point to a growth in the share of crop farms in the general number of farms. in 2013, the share amounted to 53%. it was stated that there is a positive relation between the economic size of a farm and the Uaa, and the share of rented land, and negative relation between the economic size of a farm and labour inputs and value of assets per 1 ha of Uaa. it was stated that labour productivity and efficiency as well as land and labour productivity grow, along with an increase in the economic size of farms. the Polish crop farms in individual economic size classes showed, on many occasions, greater competitive capacity as regards analogous farms from the researched countries. keywords: economic size of a farm, production potential, production efficiency, competitiveness of farms. * Crop farms correspond to the category of farms specialised in field crops as per the FADN typology (Farm Accountancy Data Network).

and austria were selected because of similar farm size and structure as well as similar production intensity level. Whereas Germany and France-as the largest milk producers, while denmark and the netherlands-as countries with the highest level of milk production intensity. researched materials were sourced from data on farms covered by european Fadn monitoring between 2013 and 2015. competitiveness of farms was determined by the ratio of farm income to costs of use of own factors of production. competitive ability was shown by Polish medium large and large farms with economic size of, respectively, eUr 50-100 thousand so and eUr 100-500 thousand so, using, accordingly, 39.1 and 81.3 ha of Uaa and maintaining: 31 and 65 cows. competitive ability was shown by hungarian and Lithuanian farms from similar economic size classes and very large hungarian and German farms.

The purpose of the research is to evaluate the socio-economic consequences of increasing the area of agricultural land under organic farming in Poland. Increasing the share of organic farms in agricultural land could lead to a reduced agricultural production, which would pose a threat to food security. Implementing the principles of an integrated and precise production system of a greater range comparing to organic farming could be a competitive solution that would contribute to achieving the environmental and climate protection objectives to a greater extent, while maintaining the existing production rate. The implementation of the objectives was based on a comparative method: the authors compareorganic farms in Poland and Germany with farms applying conventional agricultural production systems. The research results demonstrate that implementing the Green Deal assumptions related to reaching 25% of agricultural land under organic farming in Poland, while maintaining the existing trends, will lead to a drop in agricultural production by approximately 11%. A competitive solution is to allocate the CAP funds to support pro-environmental measures and programs in the case of all farms. Participation in such programs should be voluntary.

The article presents the current situation of Polish farms oriented towards pig breeding, resulting from a drastic reduction in the pig population after 2007 which took place in farms holding up to 200 pigs. The assessment covered the production and economic activity of pig farms, by determining their efficiency and competitiveness against a background of similar farms from Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain. The results of analyses show that the major factor determining production efficiency and competitiveness of Polish pig farms was the production scale stemming from a very low level of breeding concentration in comparison with farms from countries analysed. In 2013, on average, on Polish farms, there were 41 pigs, while in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, there were 3096, 2285 and 587 pigs, respectively. Large Polish farms (economic size of EUR 100-500 thousand SO) were able to compete and very large farms were fully competitive. The major causes of a weak Polish pig production sector have been indicated and include a low level of concentration, no links between pig producers and commercial/meat processing plants as well as the existence of barriers preventing investment in livestock buildings adapted to a greater production scale.

the paper presents the situation of farms located in areas exposed