Large farms in EU countries with different levels of economic development in 2005–2016

The higher growth rate of labor costs in non-agricultural sectors and prices of agricultural production means than the sales prices of agricultural products in countries with a market economy causes a decrease in the unit profitability of agricultural production. Farmers who want to obtain a satisfactory income must increase the scale of production, mainly by increasing the area of ​​farms. The research deliberately covered two selected groups of countries differing in the level of economic development defined by the value of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The justification for this choice was the existing dependence of the economic power of agricultural farms on the level of the national economy of the countries studied. The first group of countries with a high level of this indicator (GDP) included: Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Great Britain and France, while the second group included Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. The analysis covered changes in the average farm area, the share of farms with an area of ​​30 ha of agricultural land and larger in the total number of farms in land use, employment and standard production in the analysed years 2005 and 2016. In the countries of groups 1 and 2, the average farm area and the share of larger farms in land use and production increased in the analysed period. In most of the countries included, the share of farms with an area of ​​100 ha and larger in production exceeded 50%.