Pluriactivity of Farming Families in Poland Status and Changes in 2013-2016

The purpose of the article is to present the state and changes in the pluriactivity of farming families in Poland in the years 2013-2016. The analysis was based on data from the representative farm structure survey (FSS) to which every EU country is required. Its results are as follows: 1) in 2016, only 1.3% of people were pluriactive, while in 2013 this percentage amounted to 31.5%; 2) the diversification of activities other than agriculture, but directly related to an agricultural holding is still carried out by a relatively small percentage of holdings: in 2016 it amounted to 2.9%; 3) over half of households with a farm user obtained income from wage labour (the most popular form of work outside a farm, as in the years 2005-2010) in addition to income from agricultural activity. The most surprising change was an increase of more than half a million persons engaged only in agriculture and a decrease of more than a million of pluriactive persons, and thus an interruption of the multiannual ratio of pluriactive persons in relation to persons engaged only in agriculture, which was 1:3. Possible reasons for this may be the following aspects: a decrease in the number of farms, including farms up to 1 ha, with the largest number of pluriactive persons, return to specialisation, phenomenon of repeasantisation, possible impact of the 500+ programme on abandoning non-agricultural works and finally the possibility of a statistical error in 2016 studies (another study, BAEL, does not show a decrease in the importance of pluriactivity). The matter is important, because the FSS is a source of official national data for EU statistics.