A struggle for survival: The polish agricultural sector from communism to EU accession

East European Politics and Societies

Volumn 19, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 614-654

  Borzutzky, Silvia ^a   Kranidis, Emmanuel ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Central Europe; Eastern Europe; EU Expansion; European Union; Poland; Polish agriculture; Polish economic reforms; Polish EU Association Agreement

Indexed keywords

EID: 27844560718     PISSN: 08883254     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0888325404270670     Document Type: Review

References (72)

1. Zbigniew Landau and Jerzy Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy in the Twentieth Century (Kent, UK: Croom Helm Ltd., 1985), 187.
2. More than 60 percent of the population earned livelihood by farming, and 50 percent of private owners were small landholders.
3. Large landholders were also called kulaks. A descriptive analysis of the political struggle between the communists and the peasant groups can be found in Andrzej Korbonski, Politics of Socialist Agriculture in Poland: 1945-1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 99-135.
4. Agricultural policy in communist Poland was implemented in the form of three- or five-year plans. We will analyze only the main policies and not each successive plan.
5. Landau and Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy, 187-88.
6. Janine R. Wedel, The Unplanned Society: Poland during and after Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 6.
7. Landau and Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy, 190.
8. Kazimierz Wyka, "The Excluded Economy," in Wedel, The Unplanned Society, 45.
9. Small farms due to their size were not mechanized, did not have the capability to meet the growing food needs of the urban areas, and could not satisfy the growing industrial demands for agricultural inputs.
10. The main agricultural targets of the new doctrine were expansion of production, to be able to meet the requirements of the national economy; redirection of the focus from small commodity to socialist production; and augmenting the agricultural inputs coming from the state such as machinery, capital (in the form of extended credits and subsidies), and fertilizers. See Korbonski, Politics of Socialist Agriculture in Poland, 157-58.
11. Landau and Tomaszewski, The Polish Economy, 193-94.
12. There were three main types of cooperatives: The lowest form was the Association of Land Cultivation (Type I), followed by the Producers' Association (Type II), and the purest form was the Producers' Union (Type III). For an in-depth analysis, see Jerzy Kostrowicki and Roman Szczesny, "Polish Agriculture: Characteristics, Types and Regions," in Jerzy Kostrowicki, John Birch, Clarence Olmstead, Andrei Rakitnikov, and Mohammad Shafi, eds., Geography of World Agriculture (Budapest, Hungary: Akademia Kiado, 1972).
13. In the mid-1950s there were only 45,200 large farms out of 3 million total farms, and these farms were capable of intensive production. See David Good, ed., Economic Transformations in East and Central Europe: Legacies from the Past and Policies for the Future (New York: Routledge, 1994), 169.
14. The new doctrine was officially announced in 1957, but the new agricultural policy approach began immediately after W. Gomulka's inauguration.
15. Kostrowicki and Szczesny, "Polish Agriculture."
16. Good, Economic Transformations, 171.
17. Mark Celt, "Another Round: Peasant and Party in Poland," in T. N. Ciepla, ed., Poland since 1956 (New York: Twayne, 1972).
18. Investments were considered to be the purchasing of land, buildings, and so on.
19. William Newcomb, Polish Agriculture: Policy and Performance (Washington, DC: Office of Economic Research, Central Intelligence Agency, 1985).
20. Carole Nagengast, Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs: Class, Culture and the Polish State (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), 109.
21. Carole Nagengast, Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs: Class, Culture and the Polish State Ibid., 1991, 109.
22. For example, private farms faced budget constraints since the financial losses had to be covered by the proprietor, which limited the efficiency of the farms. On the other hand, state farms faced bureaucratic obstacles to efficient operation, while the financial penalties for inefficiency were covered by state subsidies or the forgiving of taxes and debts. Josef Brada and Arthur King, "Is Private Farming More Efficient than Socialized Agriculture?" Economica, New Series 60:237(1993): 41-56.
23. Nagengast, Reluctant Socialists, 110-11.
24. The exclusion of private farmers and especially small landowners from the retirement funds was considered to be one more kind of discrimination against private farming during the 1960s.
25. Newcomb, Polish Agriculture.
26. Nagengast, Reluctant Socialists, 117-18.
27. An excellent analysis of the developments about the Polish agriculture during the 1970s can be found in Newcomb, Polish Agriculture.
28. The macroeconomic consequence of these policies was pressure on Poland to meet its debt obligations. Only after an agreement was reached with the "Paris Club" (lender governments) and with the "London Club" (commercial lenders).
29. Nagencast, Reluctant Socialist, 119.
30. Lesek Balcerowicz states this in his book, Socialism Capitalism Transformation (Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press, 1995), 273.
31. Richard Hunter Jr. and Leo Ryan. C.S.V., From Autarky to the Market: Polish Economics and Politics, 1945-1995 (Westport, CT: Preager, 1998), 62.
32. Internal pressure from the Communist Party bureaucracy, which feared a reduction of political power, prevented the government to move forward with the necessary reforms.
33. Equalization of the agricultural and nonagricultural population incomes.
34. State action and its results in agriculture during the 1980s are shown in Roger Clarke, ed., Poland: The Economy in the 80s; Perspectives of Eastern Europe (Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press, 1989), 67-71.
35. Hunter and Ryan, From Autarky to the Market, 64.
36. Lawrence Goodwind, Breaking the Barrier: The Rise of Solidarity in Poland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
37. There are two views regarding migration. One argues that migration entails a loss of labor and potential capacity, and another claims that there is still excess workforce, which makes it difficult to improve farms' structure.
38. A description of the centrally planned socialist economy in Poland can be found in Rafael Shen, The Polish Economy: Legacies from the Past, Prospects for the Future (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), chap. 2.
39. Solidarity won all the seats in the Parliament (Sejm) that it was permitted to challenge and ninety-nine out of one hundred seats in the Senate, thus altering the political power base in the country.
40. Phrase used by Dr. Balcerowicz himself.
41. Balcerowicz offers his view of the reform plan in Socialism Capitalism Transformation, 290-340.
42. The Polish economy enjoyed a great degree of openness to the international economy by the mid-1990s.
43. From March 1993 to February 1994 an interim agreement regulated trade with the EU.
44. A detailed discussion can be found in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), OECD Report 1994, Review of Agricultural Policies: Poland (Brussels: OECD, 1994).
45. European Community Studies Association (ECSA), Poland and the European Union: Between Association and Membership, ECSA Series 4 (Brussels: ECSA), 248;
46. and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Review of Agricultural Policies: Poland, OECD Report (Paris: OECD, 1994), 82.
47. John Nash and Csaba Csaki, The Agrarian Economies of Central and Eastern and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Situation and Perspectives, World Bank Discussion Paper no. 387 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997), 59.
48. Input-related subsidies that served as the primary measure of agricultural units support were abolished in 1991.
49. Stanislaw Wellisz, "Going Global: Transition from Plan to Market Economy," in Desai Padma, ed., Poland (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 219.
50. Demand for food fell by 8 percent; ECSA, Poland and the European Union, 245.
51. The input price level was distorted during the 1980s, and during the early transition period it had to be adjusted downward. Additional downward pressures were exercised to input prices by the real appreciation of the zloty.
52. ECSA, Poland and the European Union, 248.
53. Even though during a transition from a centrally planned to a free market economy there is economic pain for all the sectors, agriculture suffered much more in Poland in relative terms.
54. An excellent discussion about foreign trade and the reaction of agricultural workers is found in Wellisz, Going Global, 216-22.
55. Which were about fifteen thousand in 1993.
56. The real GDP growth was about 5.3 percent between 1993 and 1995, 7 percent between 1995 and 1997, and an average real growth of 4.4 percent until 2000. European Commission, Directorate General for Agriculture, Agricultural Situation in the Candidate Countries: Country Report on Poland (Brussels: European Commission, Directorate General for Agriculture, July 2002).
57. C. Folmer, M. A. Keyzer, M. D. Merbis, H. J. J. Stolwijk, and P. J. J. Veenendaal, The Common Agricultural Policy beyond MacSharry Reform (Paris: Elsevier Science B.V. Editions, 1995), 12.
58. Rosemary Fenell, The Common Agricultural Policy (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1997).
59. For some products such as eggs, vegetables, and some types of fruits, only export subsidies were applied. The export subsidy was applied when the EU internal price was lower than the world price of the commodity; if not, the subsidy was substituted by an export tax to prohibit EU products to enter the world market.
60. Under this scheme, the farmers that wished to participate and be eligible for compensation had to withdraw at least 20 percent of their arable land from production.
61. A discussion of the environmental aspect of these new horizontal Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) goals can be found in Paulos Pezeros, "The Environmental Dimension of the Common Agricultural Policy" (Discussion paper prepared for the seminar, "The CAP and the Environment Challenge - New Tasks for the Public Administrations," European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, the Netherlands, May 2001).
62. European Commission, Directorate General for Agriculture, "Agricultural Situation and Prospects in the Central and Eastern European Countries," Working Paper, June 1998 (Brussels: European Commission, Directorate General for Agriculture, 1998), 10-11.
63. "Agricultural Situation and Prospects in the Central and Eastern European Countries," Working Paper, 1998, Ibid., I, 54.
64. Commission of the European Community, 2001 Regular Report on Poland's Progress Towards Accession, SEC (2001) 1752 (Brussels: Commission of the European Community, 2001), 10.
65. The Special Accession Program for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD) regulations are set by the European Commission - EC no. 1268/1999.
66. Also to develop the capability of implementing other EU aid mechanisms such as Phare.
67. European Commission, Directorate General for Agriculture, "Agricultural Situation," 6.
68. Commission of the European Community, Enlargement and Agriculture: Successfully Integrating the New Member States into the CAP, Issues Paper (Brussels: Commission of the European Community, January 2002).
69. After 2006, the support will increase proportionally to ensure an adequate support level.
70. Mainly structural funds.
71. Economic Research Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture in Poland and Hungary: Preparing for EU Accession, Agricultural Outlook, Dec. 1999 (Washington, DC: Economic Research Service/U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1999), 20.
72. For example, in 1996, cereal and oilseed prices benefited from high world prices.