Financial security of Polish farms. Proposal for a unified measure

The main objective of the work was to present a proposal for a methodological composition of the financial security (BF) measure for Polish farms. The developed indicator took into account five factors derived from the indicator analysis of financial data. The subject of the research were farms from Poland that conduct agricultural accounting within the FADN system. The subject of the research was the financial security of these farms. It was measured based on indicators of asset-capital relations, liquidity and debt, operational efficiency and financial effectiveness. First, the state of financial security in the Polish farm sector was described against the background of average results observed in the European Union in the years 2004-2020. Then, based on the experimental summary BF indicator, a ranking of farms for 2020 was created, showing the 10 highest and lowest results. In the final part of the work, a sensitivity test of the BF indicator to selected 12 basic production, economic and financial categories was performed using the classic least squares method with a constant. After the conducted research, it can be stated that Polish farms are financially secure, which results from: the predominance of fixed assets in the balance sheet total, compliance with the golden balance sheet rule, excess liquidity, low debt, positive share of net working capital in the balance sheet total and noticeable profitability. Moreover, their results do not differ significantly from the average level observed in the 28 EU countries. Based on the ranking, it was shown that the smallest farms – up to 12 ha, with income up to approx. EUR 11 thousand – tend to maintain excessive financial security, regardless of the direction of production. This is confirmed by the results of estimated models with one variable. The higher the financial security of the farm, the lower the assets, liabilities, income and cash flow.