Zachowanie się rolników jako producentów i konsumentów (implikacje ekonomiczne i społeczne)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze behavior of private farmers as producers and consumers and also show some economic and social consequences of this behavior. The author puts forward some suggestions concerning changes in the market and institutional environment of the private agricultural sector in Poland. In the adjustment process, the agricultural farm faces different constraints from those encountered by socialized economic units. These constraints become visible on the side of supply, demand, financial feeding and motivation to raise the volume of agricultural output. Demand, which in the economics of shortages does not represent any major constraint for enterprises, poses a certain constraint for agricultural farms even though they do not come across any bigger difficulties in selling their output. It is a result of the local character of the selling process, compulsory forms employed in contracting agricultural produce and its tied sales with provision of industrial goods and services for agricultural as well as the monopolistic position held by the state purchaser. Constraints in supply are of a hard character as a result of considerable shortages in supplies of industrial goods and services for agriculture. Despite this, the adaptability of private farms is much greater than that of other economic units. Negative effects of shortages in supplies become cumulated. A typology has been performed on behavior of farmers according to utility of industrial goods and services for agriculture as attributed by them, and numerous conclusions have been formulated with regard to ways of improving industrial supplies for agricultural production. In as much as budgetary constraints in socialized enterprises are of a soft character they are of a hard character in private agricultural farms with the price representing an external element in relation to the farm. The previously pursued price« and taxation policies sire initialized and changes in this area proposed. While discussing constraints imposed by insufficient motivation of farmers to raise their output there are stressed absence of conditions for satisfaction of economic aspirations; social and economic threats faced by the institution of peasant farming; difficulties in satisfying farmers’ propensity to consumption; their awareness of wastage low quality of life in the village and pejorative status of the farmer's profession in the social awareness.