By virtue of the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of 10 February 2015, the Multi-Annual Program entitled “The Polish and the EU agricultures 2020+. Challenges, chances, threats, proposals” was implemented in the years 2015-2019 by IAFE-NRI. Being both horizontal and strategic in its assumptions, this program allowed us to define the transformation processes within the broadly understood agri-business as well as the advantages and threats connected with further development of agriculture and rural areas. It was a source of rationale for supporting public policies in the decision-making process.

The main aim of the Multi-Annual Program of 2015-2019 was to support governmental institutions, especially The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in their monitoring of the socio-economic and organizational situation of the country as well as in planning, negotiating, analyzing, evaluating and implementing of the development policies concerning the Polish agriculture and rural areas. These actions should lead to growing competitiveness of the Polish agri-business until 2020 and beyond. The other aims of the research program were as follows: to define the general trends in the world economy, to define the sources of growth in agriculture, to examine the role of the agri-food sector, to assess chances and threats in development of farms and agricultural enterprises, to determine the mechanisms of overcoming the structural barriers to rural development, to examine the effects of innovations in the food economy, to define the position of farms and agricultural enterprises in meeting the challenges of climate change, to appraise the external effects and public goods in agriculture, to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of using financial transfers and the instruments of the CAP in structural transformation, establishing the competitive advantages and improvement of living and working conditions of rural inhabitants. The Multi-Annual Program “The Polish and the EU agricultures 2020+. Challenges, chances, threats, proposals” was divided into 8 topics and 27 research tasks which covered the main socio-economic issues related to agri-business and rural areas at regional, national, EU and global level. They were as follows:

I. Impact of the general trends in the world economy on the development trends in the EU agriculture

• Quantitative changes in the world economy;
• Knowledge-based economy – challenges to the Polish agri-food sector and its adjustments.

II. Social polarization versus economic stability in the development processes of agriculture and rural areas

• Forming of socio-economic cohesion at the local and regional level;
• Mechanisms leading to overcoming structural barriers in the development of family farms and rural areas;
• Defining the rural and agricultural policies in the conditions of transformation of the rural economy.

III. Factors determining the innovative activity in the agri-food sector:

• Evaluation of the innovations in the Polish agri-food sector;
• Organizational conditions of the innovations in the Polish agri-food sector;
• Regional strategies to encourage innovations in agriculture, food industry and rural areas.

IV. Financial and fiscal factors in the improvement of efficiency, sustainability and competitiveness of the Polish agriculture:

• Fiscal mechanisms and stimuli having their influence on the rural development, returnable financing and quasi-marketable instruments for internalization of external effects in agriculture, the provision of public goods;
• Subsidies versus economics, finances and incomes of farms;
• Taxes, quasi-taxes, transfers and social and farm insurance, instruments of risk management in ensuring competitiveness, financial stability and social security in agriculture and rural areas.

V. Dilemmas of the development of sustainable agriculture in Poland

• Global and national conditions of the sustainable development of agriculture;
• Economic assessment of external effects and public goods in agriculture;
• Sustainable agriculture and food security.

VI. Farms and agricultural enterprises in the face of climatic change and the changes in the agricultural policy

• Challenges of globalization versus competitiveness of farms and agricultural enterprises in Poland;
• Economic effects of adjustments and mitigating actions on farms and in agricultural enterprises in different natural and organizational conditions;
• Efficiency of farms and agricultural enterprises;
• Analysis of changes in profitability of the selected agricultural products;
• Obstacles to modernization of farms and agricultural enterprises in the country against their competitiveness.

VII. Development and the economic outlook for the agri-food markets

• Developments in the world markets and their consequences for the domestic agri-food market;
• Evaluations of the current situation in the basic agri-food markets in Poland against the background of the EU markets;
• Competitiveness of the Polish food producers and its determining factors;
• Structural transformations of the food industry in Poland and in the EU in the changing market environment.

VIII. Sources of growth and the expected evolution of structures and the role of the agri-food sector until the year 2020 and beyond

• Investments, efficiency and new technologies as the sources of economic growth in agriculture until and after 2020;
• Market structures and prices in the food chain in the light of margin levels, its transparency, competitiveness and regulations;
• Functioning and the role of the agri-food sector within the national economy (the model approach);
• Developing the methodology for evaluation and monitoring of changes in the index of result for RDP 2014-2020, which is measured by a relation of gross value added to the annual work unit (GVA/AWU).

Research and analyses held under the Multi-Annual Programme 2015-2019  ”The Polish and the EU agricultures 2020+. Challenges, chances, threats, proposals” ended in 2019. Their results were published as 88 publications in Polish and 33 in English. All Multi-Annual Programme publications are available under open access in PDF format on the Institute’s website.

http://ierigz.waw.pl./publikacje/publikacje-programu-wieloletniego-2015-2019