Problems of the Re-Structuring of Agriculture in the Light of the Polish Experience

The title of this paper could give rise to a misunderstanding about the author’s opinions. It is therefore worth starting by indicating his disagreement with simplified conceptions of agricultural re-structuring when these conceptions centre on one of the forms of land concentration. This is not to deny the importance of the problem of land ownership within the context of the factors determining the socio-economic and technical-economic structures within this sector. But in the developed countries, it is a long time since agriculture was dominated by reciprocal factor substitution of land and labour both at the level of production forces and at the level of the relations of production. It is the substitution of either or both by a third factor, namely, by man-made and accumulated means of production, which becomes decisive in determining agricultural structures. This is manifested in several ways: in the increasing divergence between the price of land and the theoretical product of the capitalization of the farming rent that might be derived from the same land as a holding; in the diminishing importance of rent in the total cost of production; and so on. The old race for new land, even land less favourable to cultivation, is being replaced by a gradual trend of abandoning regions which were, until recently, agricultural.