HIGHLY COMMERCIAL FAMILY FARMS IN THE LIGHT OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AREAS IN POLAND

The study presents one of the aspects of the sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas, namely the problem of achieving satisfactory income by working population engaged in agriculture. Moreover, it shows the recognition and assessment of changes in production resources of high productivity farms, i.e. the ones which scale of agricultural activity enables achieving income from work at a family farm at least similar to an average income in non-agricultural field. The efficiency of farming, taking into consideration the aspect of reasonable use of natural environment was also examined. The study is based on empirical data from periodical research of the Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics - National Research Institute, carried out on a sample of around 4000 individual farms of over 1.00 ha of agricultural land. The work performed shows that the group of family large commercial farms examined to a relatively high extent managed to harmonize the large-scale production with the compliance with environmental protection requirements. The compliance with these requirements constitutes a significant aspect of the development of agriculture and rural areas.