Rural areas are of great importance both for the natural environment and for economic life in Poland. Increasingly greater importance is assigned to their non-agricultural functions, such as: residential function, water management, regeneration of people’s strength and health, conservation of the natural environment, forestry, etc. The necessity for reconstruction of farming structures, regulation of processes related to the circulation of water and water erosion, and the need to protect water resources and natural biocenoses, will require formulation of a new usage model in those areas, and introduction of thorough changes in the area of agricultural management. Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004 has allowed for taking long-term, very costly but necessary actions implementing the most important general social objectives, such as flood prevention and regulation of water relations, protection of the resources and valours of the natural environment and its partial renaturalization, shaping of the required climatic and landscape advantages of the rural areas, extension of the agricultural function of farms (apart from manufacturing activities) with ecological activities (related to conservation and protection), as well as conservation of cultural and ethnographic properties of the rural areas. Due to organizational reasons and their pro-social nature, such activities should be ...
