Resource information
Agriculture in Poland varies from region to region in terms of the level of farming culture and intensity of production. The majority of holdings are family farms, which use extensive farming practices and which are geared towards multidirectional production. They are characterized by low product marketability. Small farms with an area of 1-5 ha prevail. The largest fragmentation of individual farms is observed in the southern and south-eastern parts of the country. A more favourable agrarian structure is found in northern Poland. The defective structure can be improved using land consolidation measures, which additionally contribute to the sustainable development of rural areas, including the creation of more favourable conditions for farming and forestry, by improving farm layout and equipping the areas being restructured with technical and social infrastructure. What surface area is occupied by individual farms is a decisive factor that determines both the pertinence of implementing land consolidation and exchange measures in a given area, and the likely outcomes of such interventions. The selection of areas (villages) with the highest percentage of privately owned farmland is an important step in developing prioritization schemes for consolidation interventions, because consolidation is supposed to bring measurable benefits in the form of improving the spatial structure of farms. The aim of this article was to classify villages in terms of the percent of agricultural land. The data concerned 15 villages of the commune of Goraj, occupying a total area of 6792.86, divided into 21417 land parcels (cadastral plots). The classes of villages identified in the study can be used as a criterion for determining the order in which the villages should be subjected to land consolidation and exchange.
