agriculture and food economy in poland

AGRICULTURE
Organisation of the agricultural market
For many years measures have been carried out in Poland to establish market
institutions involved in the professional organisation of wholesale trade in agri-food
products and to set up agricultural producer groups co-operating with such
markets.
Resulting from the implementation of the ministerial programme and
government programmes to establish and develop wholesale markets and the
Warsaw Commodity Exchange – stages 1 and 2, over a dozen or so wholesale
markets, established in the form of joint stock companies, operate in Poland. The
main shareholders of these companies are the State Treasury, Agency for
Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture, traders, self-government
organisations, agricultural producers and other bodies.
The operation of wholesale markets contributes to an improvement of
agricultural holding effectiveness by ensuring:
– greater price stabilisation,
– supply and demand equilibrium,
– introduction of standards,
– reduction in the number of intermediaries in trade and consequently an
increase in producers’ incomes,
– stimulation of a process of adjusting agricultural production to market
requirements,
– establishment of a producer market (supply organisation).
Thanks to co-ordination and concentration of supplies from producers and
technical and logistics capabilities, wholesale markets offer large and homogenous
product batches. They also offer services related to the promotion and advertising
of agri-food products, quality control, standardisation, processing and packaging.
The pan-regional wholesale markets built from scratch in Poznaƒ, Warsaw
(Bronisze), Gdaƒsk, Wroc∏aw and Lublin (Elizówka) are state-of-the-art facilities,
fulfilling European requirements. In addition, there are also local markets which were
often established as a result of adaptation of the existing facilities. The wholesale
markets are not only a trading place but also information databases on supply and
demand. The markets are now starting establishing logistics centres that will
facilitate trade in commodities in the area within the wholesale market influence.
The proper functioning of the wholesale markets largely depends on the
development of producer groups and their entry on the wholesale markets. The
development of producer groups in Poland – taking into account particularly large
fragmentation of agricultural holdings – is the primary task aimed at the proper
operation of the Polish agricultural market and adaptation to EU requirements,
especially those concerning the organisation of the fruit and vegetable markets.
The process of setting up agricultural producer groups was commenced in
Poland in 1992-1993. It was preceded by a rapid, fourfold fall in the share of the
cooperative sector in buying in agri-food products and a five to sixfold fall in food
processing.
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