Does the demographic crisis threaten European and Polish agriculture?

In recent decades, the problems of family farming have been coupled with the demographic crisis. Against the background of unfavourable forecasts and population processes, the EU agricultural policy has consistently emphasised the strategic importance of family farming and the need for its development as a vital segment of the economy and the core of rural communities. The aim of this article is to assess the justifications for the policy aimed at halting the demographic crisis in EU agriculture, as well as to present the preliminary effects of implementing the subsidy instrument for farms run by young farmers using the example of Poland. The analyses carried out show that the mechanisms for accelerating generational changes in agriculture in the EU had controversial premises and were not adapted to the needs visible at the national and regional level. In EU strategic documents and public debate, support for generational change in agriculture is based on arguments diagnosing the particularly unfavourable demographic situation of this sector. The article shows that this position is too general and simplified, because it does not take into account long-term population changes, the situation in other sectors of the economy and various socio-economic and institutional contexts in the Member States, and is also limited to a narrow range of often incomparable data. It is currently difficult to find grounds for claims that subsidies for young farmers have solved the problems of farms without successors and have contributed to the rejuvenation of the farming population. For the purposes of the article, various sources of data and information have been used, including: EU and national legal acts, thematic and expert studies on demographic issues in agriculture, and empirical material collected by public institutions.