2120 final report.pdf - Agra CEAS Consulting

APPENDIX 1: MEMBER STATE REPORTSThe largest 4 and 8 firms are estimated to account for 13.9% and 18.0% of the total number of layinghens respectively 117 .During the process of economic transition in Poland, marketing channels changed substantially. Manylarge-scale egg production companies entered into supply contracts with retail chains, wholesalersand the food processing industry. Around one-third of egg output in Poland is destined directly forretail sales, and the role of official procurement has continued to decline. Free range and open airproduced eggs continue to be predominantly produced by average-sized farms and are mainly sold inopen air markets, however an increasing proportion are now regularly supplied by more specialisedfarmers, as well as some large-scale producers.Faced with stable domestic demand, egg producers are trying to increase egg consumption bydeveloping new egg products, such as multi-feed eggs (eggs from hens fed with different feedstuffs),OMEGA eggs (eggs from hens fed with light fatty acid enriched feed), low-cholesterol eggs, eggsenriched with vitamins, etc. However, due to price premiums, the market for such products iscurrently limited largely to large supermarkets or other shops located close to large cities.Consumers in small towns continue to favour free-range "traditional country eggs", although theseare increasingly produced by medium and large farms, but still traded at open-air markets or directlyto customers.Egg production is frequently the only source of income for large-scale egg producers in Poland,although some producers that own large grain elevators used to receive money by being involved inthe state intervention storage of grains. Most egg producers also have some cropping area, usedmainly for cereal production to provide poultry feed. Smaller-scale egg producers are generallyinvolved in a wider variety of agricultural enterprises, such as crop production and poultrymeatproduction. Egg production on the average sized farms is considered a by-product activity. The farmsize structure for laying hen production in terms of farm area and size of flock are presented in TableA1.90) and Table A1.91 indicates that production has become increasingly concentrated with thenumber of farms in the largest size category (more than 10,000 hens) more than doubling and theaverage size of such units rising from 31,180 to 42,386.117 Based on the estimates of laying hen numbers in the largest firms (see Table A1.89) average number of laying hens for the period from2000 to 2002 (see Table A1.88).259