Pluriactivity of Farming Families in Poland Status and Changes in 2013–2016

The purpose of the article is to present the state and changes in the pluriactivity of farming families in Poland in the years 2013-2016. The analysis was based on data from the representative farm structure survey (FSS) to which every EU country is required. Its results are as follows: 1) in 2016, only 1.3% of people were pluriactive, while in 2013 this percentage amounted to 31.5%; 2) the diversification of activities other than agriculture, but directly related to an agricultural holding is still carried out by a relatively small percentage of holdings: in 2016 it amounted to 2.9%; 3) over half of households with a farm user obtained income from wage labour (the most popular form of work outside a farm, as in the years 2005-2010) in addition to income from agricultural activity. The most surprising change was an increase of more than half a million persons engaged only in agriculture and a decrease of more than a million of pluriactive persons, and thus an interruption of the multiannual ratio of pluriactive persons in relation to persons engaged only in agriculture, which was 1:3. Possible reasons for this may be the following aspects: a decrease in the number of farms, including farms up to 1 ha, with the largest number of pluriactive persons, return to specialization, phenomenon of repeasantisation, possible impact of the 500+ programme onabandoning non-agricultural works and finally the possibility of a statistical error in 2016 studies (another study, BAEL, does not show a decrease in the importance of pluriactivity). The matter is important, because the FSS is a source of official national data for EU statistics