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A rationale for providing support to the farm sector in the course of economic development and structural change is a growing gap between the incomes of non-agricultural workers and the incomes of farmers. Drawing on a model that enables us to analyze the level of social stress experienced by farmers as employment shifts from the farm sector to other sectors, we find that even without an increasing gap between the incomes of non-agricultural workers and the incomes of farmers, support to farmers might be needed/can be justified. This result arises because under well specified conditions, when the size of the farm population decreases, those who remain in farming experience increasing aggregate social stress. The increase is nonlinear: it is modest when the outflow from the farm sector is relatively small or when it is large, and it becomes more significant when the outflow is moderate. This finding can inform policy makers who seek to alleviate the social stress of the farming population as to the timing and intensity of that intervention.

While the positive effect of economic integration on trade is commonly accepted, we still lack a proper understanding of the complex patterns behind this phenomenon. In particular, it is important to better understand how the structure of trade linkages evolves. This is because there are reasons to assume that countries within an economic integration agreement do not trade with each other on random basis. On the contrary, one may argue that they select trade linkages and this choice may be driven by various factors. In this paper we test two specific predictions that originate from the recent literature and which could be informative in this respect. First, we show that the size of the initial trade network is positively correlated with building new trade linkages. In other words, a greater initial number of trading partners facilitates establishing new connections. Second, we also provide some evidence in support of the hypothesis that the evolution of trade network for a given country depends on the trade network of its trading partners. In this case however, our results are slightly less robust.

Based on a unique micro-survey data from dairy sector in Poland, we provide quantitative evidence documenting farmers’ position towards input suppliers, an issue often overlooked in the literature, which typically focuses on sectors downstream from the farm. We proxy for farmers' bargaining power with their self-reported assessment. This differs from the approach commonly adopted in other studies which normally use for that purpose the farm size. Using an econometric analysis, we show that the latent variable measured by this proxy helps us to explain discounts at which farmers buy feed from input suppliers, in addition to what is explained by the farm size or the quality of farm output.

In this paper, we employ a novel, network analysis based approach to gain new insights with respect to the changes in the structure of intra-European Union (EU) milk product trade between 2001 and 2012. Several network indices are computed to assess the relative importance of the countries from a number of perspectives. The results emphasise that the trade network has become denser, yet its overall centralisation slightly decreased during the period. While the impacts of the 2004 EU enlargement are clearly visible, the effects of the 2008 financial crisis are less evident. Integration of countries that joined the EU in 2004 or 2007 (the so-called New Member States, NMS) is only partial, and depends on the category of milk product considered. Although the number of NMS trade relations increased constantly between 2001 and 2012, the relative importance of most of them did not change. A significant exception is Poland, which became one of the most important exporting countries., https://doi.org/10.7896/j.1621

Though there is a vibrant debate about the determinants of structural change in agricultural sector, the broad consensus is that it is mainly driven by economic environment and farmers' characteristics. In this paper, we try to complement this view and study whether the pattern of farm exits is shaped by rural politics. Using local-level data for Poland, and accounting for variables commonly used in other studies, we show that in the period 1996-2010, the scope and speed of structural change in agricultural sector were heavily influenced by the extent to which municipality councils were captured by agricultural interests. More specifically, we find that in regions with higher political representation of farmers there were less exits from farming and land consolidation process was slower. Thus, our findings suggest that investigating the distribution of political resources at the local level might be as important for our understanding of structural change as studying the impact of farm size or the development of non-agricultural job opportunities.

The distribution of rents between the successive stages in the food chain has been of great interest both to academicians and policy makers. Notwithstanding the extensive literature devoted to this issue, our understanding of the vertically related nature of the food chain and factors affecting bargaining power of various agents is still limited. This paper tries to fill this gap at least in part. The specific example that we use comes from dairy sector in Poland. Based on a unique micro-survey data, we provide some evidence documenting farmers’ position vis-à-vis processing industry and input suppliers. Interestingly, the picture we get is rather inconsistent with a popular opinion arguing that farmers are being “exploited” by other stages in the food chain.

While many factors have been studied in relation to the functioning of land markets, the role of land distribution has received relatively little attention. In this paper, we ask to what extent farmers’ propensity to buy land is related to the difference between them and their neighbours in terms of land ownership. To this end, we employ the concept of relative deprivation. Drawing on micro-level data from the transition period in Poland and using both OLS and instrumental variables strategy, we find that interpersonal comparisons with others in one’s reference group may have motivated a farmer’s behaviour in the land market. In particular, the propensity to purchase land is positively associated with experiencing higher relative deprivation. In addition, this relationship waned over time in a predictable manner: late in the transition period it was weaker than at the beginning of the period.

There now exists a large literature on price transmission in agro-food sectors. However, a great majority of empirical studies focus on the existence of asymmetry and, by and large, do not allow investigating the reason for its presence or absence. This is in sharp contrast to the theoretical literature that provides a number of explanations for why we should expect (a)symmetry. In response to this, this paper tries to uncover the reasons for asymmetric price transmission in the agro-food chain. To do so, we use meta-analysis drawing on the existing studies from this area. Our focus is on the organizational and institutional characteristics of the agro-food supply chain. Our findings suggest that asymmetric price transmission in farm-retail relationship is more likely to occur in sectors/countries with more fragmented farm structure, higher governmental support and more restrictive regulations on price controls in retail sector. On the other hand, more restrictive regulations on entry barriers in retail sector and relative importance of the sector in question tend to promote symmetric farm-retail price transmission. The latter is also more likely in the presence of strong processing industry.

Rapid and thorough changes have recently taken place in dairy supply chain in the whole Central and Eastern Europe. Growing concerns have been expressed that these changes may negatively affect farmers' relative position towards downstream industry, due to market power exercised by the latter. In response to this, the present paper aims to investigate the price transmission mechanism in two countries from the region, namely Poland and Hungary and contrast the results with dairy market organisations specific for these countries. Using cointegrated vector autoregression and controlling for potential structural breaks, it is shown that Polish milk prices, as opposed to Hungarian ones, are characterised by short- and long-term asymmetries. We discuss a number of potential explanations supporting the empirical results. We consider, among others, differences between the dairy chain structures and the role of FDI.

In order to stabilise and improve their income situation, rural households are strongly encouraged to diversify their activities both within and outside the agricultural sector. Often, however, this advice is only moderately pursued. This paper addresses issues of rural household income diversification in the case of Poland. It investigates returns from rural household income strategies using propensity score matching methods and extensive datasets spanning 1998-2008. Results suggest that returns from combining farm and off-farm activities were lower than returns from concentrating on farming or on self-employment outside agriculture. This differential is stable over time although returns from diversification have relatively improved after Poland’s accession to the EU. This is also visible in the fact that since 2006 returns from combining farm and off-farm activities have evened with returns from relying solely on hired off-farm labour, thus smoothing the difference observed before the accession. Further, over the analysed period, households pursuing the diversification strategy performed better than those relying solely on unearned income. Finally, in general, the income in households combining farm and off-farm activities was higher than in those combining two off-farm income sources.