Lending as an alternative to leasing agricultural land

The article discusses a relatively new phenomenon on the land market, namely free land lending. It concerns neighbourly land turnover and is the second, after lease (contractual and "grey"), method of dependent land possession. In the literature on the subject, lending has various references in the theory of social sciences and can be treated, among others, as a phenomenon of the sphere of behavioural behaviours, a type of reciprocal altruism, or be located in the sphere of the sharing economy. Giving land that is part of the resources of an agricultural holding on loan usually results from many complex and jointly occurring conditions. It is associated with various determinants of the region, including the location of the land and the demand for lease. However, it brings numerous benefits both to the owner, i.e. the lender, and to its new user. The research conducted in the form of a case study indicates that the main reason for giving land on loan was the lack of people willing to lease it. Other reasons include: the desire to maintain the values ​​of agricultural use of land, its unregulated legal status, but also the unprofitability of its use by the owner, i.e. the lack of economic rents from the land. In the studied subregions of the Świętokrzyskie province, the share of land under lease in the structure of land used was very diverse and ranged from 5 to 40% (only in one commune was there no indication of the occurrence of lease), and on average it was about 10–15%. Cautious estimates indicate that on a national scale, about 180–320 thousand ha, i.e. about 2% of agricultural land in Poland, are subject to lease.