Summary:

Over the past few years, diversification and pluriactivity of farmers and
farming households has been increasing in EU-27countries. But the type of diversification
activity encouraged, as well as their scale, appears to be very different
across the EU.
Therefore the analysis of spatial diversification of other gainful activity of
farm households in EU countries is the main purpose of this paper. 27 UE countries
described with 9 variables relating to the non-agricultural activity of farms
are the analysed objects.
The carried survey helps to show spatial disparities and to discriminate
groups of countries with a similar farmer’s non-agricultural activity.
There were used chosen methods of multidimensional comparative analysis
which enable clustering the multicriterial objects: Czekanowski’s diagram, Ward’s
method, and k-mean algorithm.
As a final result there were formed 5 clusters with countries about similar
level of farm diversification. It may be stated, that a development of diversification
of agricultural holdings is correlated with a spatial arrangement. Neighbouring
countries belong to the same clusters of other gainful activity kinds.