Regionalisation of unutilised agricultural area in Poland

Abstract

Until the marketization of economy in 1990, practically there was no unutilised agricultural land in Poland. After the political transformation, the use of marginal land and part of small agricultural parcels located in areas of better soil agricultural suitability became unprofitable for economic reasons. Despite the reform of Polish agriculture, the problem of not using a large part of agricultural land is constantly present. There are currently no detailed data available on the actual scale of regionalisation and the structure of the landuse abandonment in Poland. Due to the above, the objective of this study is to fill knowledge gaps on this phenomenon. Analyses were performed based on cadastral maps for the whole country. It is the first comprehensive and detailed study of this issue, giving the full review of the regionalisation of abandoned land. Unutilised land defined as: cadastral parcels located on rural land, which is not declared as production area by farmers.

The study has shown that currently in Poland more than 2.7 million ha of agricultural land is not declared by the farmers as area for agricultural activity. This assessment includes 2.03 million ha of unutilized areas of effective production (parcels  > 0.3 ha), which constitutes 14.2% of the overall agricultural area. A significant proportion of the unutilised agricultural land constitute medium and high productivity soils: 59.7 thousand ha of class III, 73.87 thousand ha of class IIIa, 116.6 thousand ha of class IIIb, 240 thousand ha of class IV, 225 thousand ha of class IVa, 221 thousand ha of class IVb. Analyses showed clear regionalisation of the problem of unused potential in the agricultural production area. This situation is particularly visible in Małopolskie, Podkarpackie, Świętokrzyskie, Śląskie, and part of Mazowieckie voivodeships.