Globalization of the Market for Vegetable Protein Feed and Its Impact on Sustainable Agricultural Development and Food Security in EU Countries Illustrated by the Example of Poland

In recent years, food security—defined as the economic and physical availability of food—has become a topic of particular importance to European countries, including Poland. In the European Union, the production volume of protein raw materials has failed to meet the demand for many years now. The deficiency reaches 60–80% of protein raw material and is covered by imported goods, primarily including soya bean meal sourced from the Americas. This type of dependency could pose a threat to food security in Poland and in many other EU countries. The main purpose of this paper was to identify the condition of the market for vegetable protein feed around the world, in the EU and in Poland and to use the example of Poland to indicate the economic and environmental consequences of globalization processes affecting the feed industry. An attempt was also made to determine the impact of these processes on sustainable development and on self-sufficiency in vegetable proteins. As a source of information, this study relied on numeric data from databases delivered by the FAO, FEFAC, Alltech, Oil World, Central Statistical Office and the Institute of Agricultural and Food Economics—the National Research Institute. The study period was 2010–2018. The methodology proposed by Chechelski was used to assess the globalization process in the Polish feed industry. Primary data used to meet the objective defined above were retrieved from empirical studies carried out with 180 selected farms from all over the country and 74 feed factories. One of the conclusions is that the globalization process in the Polish market for vegetable protein feed resulted in changing the feed production technology by marginalizing the use of native sources of plant protein. As the farmers lack interest in cultivating these plants, they cannot reap the natural benefits derived from them. From the perspective of environmental impacts, this perturbs the sustainable agriculture concept.