Summary:

The book addresses the issues of production services on family farms in
four communes situated in different regions of Poland, representing specific types
of agriculture. The investigations aimed at presentation of the influence of production
services on agricultural farm economics by means of determining the interrelations
between the intensity of using the services and factors of production
resources under diversified conditions of agriculture development. The basis for
the analysis were many-year investigations conducted on agricultural farms by
means of questionnaire interview on a representative sample of randomly selected
farms. The research objective strived to reveal how much the current level of agriculture
development affects the intensity and structure of purchased production
services, existing farmers' preferences and expectations concerning the quantity,
quality and form of provided services. It has been established that after its integration
into the European Union structures Polish agriculture requires new organizational,
technical and economic solutions in the area of services functioning
and in the influence on the quantitative and qualitative transformations of agricultural
production. It has been found that the level and structure of acquired production
services are determined by the area and economic scale of farms, trends
and specialization of production and resources of presented factors of production.
Constructed mathematical model in the additive form of multiple regression allowed
to verify the hitherto existing opinions and determine a set of factors affecting
the use of services by family farms. The farms situated in the areas with
a higher level of technical and economic development of agriculture reveal
a greater intensity of acquired services per area and employment unit. Irrespective
of the development level, farms with the smallest area and those where the capital
- technical means - labour relationship is unfavourable, reveal the greatest need
for services. One of the main factors affecting the farms' demand for services are
the resources of possessed technical means, mainly traction force. The farms in
this group constituting ¼ of the total number of the investigated ones reveal the
highest level of acquired services with dominating works connected directly with
crop production. On the other hand, farms with the biggest economic power, with
large area and particularly those specializing in crop production and well
equipped in technical means for agricultural production, show the lowest intensity
in acquired services per area unit. Their structure shows apparently growing
share of technical services such as repairs of farm machinery. Both this group of
farms and the other specializing in livestock production reveal growing demand
for specialist services provided using highly efficient machinery and combined
harvesters as well as services in substitutive and complementary relationships in
view of possessed resources. Production services in agriculture show underdeveloped
institution of agriculture servicing with solutions encountered in well developed
economies. Current organizational forms are not the factor influencing modernisation
processes or structural transformations of family farms in Poland.