Within ten years, Polish agriculture will be overwhelmed by Ukraine, unless Polish politics rapidly develop a different agricultural policy. Polish agriculture will certainly be pushed aside if neighboring Ukraine is admitted to the European Union in a few years, warns Polish agricultural economist Grzegorz Brodziak.
The current policy of continuing to subsidize about a million Polish hobby farmers without investing in modernization and innovation is called disastrous by the agriculture specialist. A new vision document by Brodziak serves as expert advice to the Polish government and political parties.
This agricultural vision will be discussed on September 12 (a month before the parliamentary elections) at a national congress of the Polish business newspaper Rzeczpospolita and the Association of Polish Economists.
Brodziak is connected as an agricultural economist to that think tank. He is also vice chairman of the Polish Agricultural Federation and vice chairman of the National Association of Pork Employers and Producers Polpig. In addition, he runs a Polish organic and sustainable agriculture organization.
The core of the report is that Poland indeed counts 1.3 million ‘farmers’ who are (co-)owners of a piece of land, but in fact only a few hundred thousand genuine farmers actually supply agricultural products to the market.
The so-called hobby farmers keep their piece of (usually inherited) land because it makes them eligible for various premiums and subsidies. Their land is mostly leased and used primarily to supply their own (family) needs, which barely counts in agricultural statistics.
Brodziak points out that the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party continues to defend that system and thus keeps the rural population (forty percent of Poland’s inhabitants!) on its side. They call it ‘sticking to the land.’ According to him, this has resulted in little being done to prepare Polish agriculture for the future through innovation.
In contrast to Poland, many former Ukrainian state enterprises have in recent years been transformed with government money into large ‘modern’ companies. A third of Ukraine’s agricultural land area is already as large as the entire Polish agriculture. Even the well-modernized large-scale Polish dairy industry will have to watch out for competition from its neighbors, says Brodziak.
The Polish agricultural economist also has a warning for other agri-exporting EU countries. Ukraine’s admission to the EU would normally take many years, and EU countries would as a precaution attach hundreds of conditions and rules.
But because of the Russian war, Brussels has already opened the door wide for Ukraine: negotiations start on December 16. Ukraine will then immediately become the largest EU country and can quickly grow into the biggest agricultural producer.