ŽIVOTNÍ PODMÍNKY A POTŘEBY ZEMĚDĚLSKÉ POPULACE V POLSKU JAK JSOU POPISOVÁNY V LITERATUŘE

Living conditions and needs of Polish rural population as described in the literature on the subject

životní podmínky a potřeby zemědělské populace v polsku jak jsou popisovány v literatuře

Andrzej Kaleta

Adresa autora:

Andrzej Kaleta, Nicolaus Copernicus University Torun, Department of sociology

Summary:

The presented materials based on sociological research carried out in the 1990s generally show very difficult living conditions of rural population and serious limitations in meeting many of their consumption needs when compared, for example, with inhabitants of big urban centres.

It is worth emphasising, however, that the surveys we analysed, particularly those carried out in the later phase of the system transformation (after 1994) bring also data which clearly show symptoms of new thinking and new action among a remarkably big part of rural population, which are more and more adequate for the reality of market economy and civil society. Among them we can certainly find:

· noticeable predominance of strategies of economic activity among farmers and more active behaviours of farmers instead of passive waiting for what future will bring;

· high level of rural enterprise, fully comparable to that in urban areas which goes far beyond the level noticed in other post-socialist countries;

· growing awareness of education importance as the pre-condition of life success, which results in concern about childrens education;

· more common belief in the change in the state role and independent problems solving first of all problems connected with communal and social infrastructure through active support for structures of local government.

Anotace:

Prezentovaný materiál je založený na sociologickém výzkumu provedeném po roce 1990, který ukazuje velmi obtížné životní podmínky venkovského obyvatelstva a vážná omezení v možnostech spotřeby ve srovnání například s obyvateli velkých městských center.

Je třeba zvýraznit, že tento předpoklad jsme analyzovali, avšak zvláště to, co se uskutečnilo v pozdější fázi přeměny systému (po roce 1994) přineslo také údaje, které zřetelně ukazují symptomy nového myšlení a nové činnosti u nápadně velké části venkovského obyvatelstva, které stále více odpovídají realitě tržního hospodářstí a občanské společnosti.

V nich můžeme určitě nalézt:

· nápadnou převahu strategií ekonomické činnosti mezi zemědělci a mnohem aktivnější chování zemědělců místo toho, aby pasivně čekali, co přinese budoucnost;

· vysokou úroveň zemědělského podnikání, zcela srovnatelnou s úrovní v městských oblastech, která je vyšší než v jiných post-socialistických zemích;

· rostoucí povědomí o důležitosti vzdělání, které je předpokladem úspěšného života a jehož výsledky se týkají výchovy dětí;

· větší víru ve změny v dané roli a nezávislé řešení problémů - nejprve problémů spojených s komunální a sociální infrastrukturou skrze aktivní podporu složení místní správy.

Key words:

living environment, living standards, availability, opportunity, farm, family, unemployment, consumption / nonconsumption needs.

Klíčová slova:

životní prostředí, životní úroveň, dosažitelnost, příležitost, hospodářství, rodina, nezaměstnanost, nutná (nezbytná) spotřeba / nenutná (zbytná) spotřeba.

Introduction: The notion of living condicions

In the light of the latest academic literature (Cecora and others 1995) living conditions are determined by:

1. Quality of the living environment that is a natural environment as well as social and cultural environment. When we say natural environment we mean its state quality of water, air, soil, etc., as well as the condition of the landscape and architecture (green areas, not spoilt landscape, spacious orderliness and neatness, etc.). Social and cultural dimension of the environment includes the potentiality to initiate the processes of interaction and social communication which lead to creating community bonds between people living in the area (friendship, neighbourhood) and close inter-human relations.

2. Living standards of the family understood as so-called real consumption. They include all measurable material and non-material goods, which are at the disposal of a given household. What we mean here is not only financial income but also production potentiality as a result of technical equipment, qualifications, skills and foresight of family members.

3. Availability of the most important socially desirable values, i.e.;

a) availability of jobs,

b) opportunities for social mobility (changing ones place in the stratification system of society),

c) availability of education,

d) availability of higher living standards,

e) opportunity to improve working conditions,

f) availability of cultural goods,

g) opportunity to take advantage of health care and hospitals,

h) opportunity to gain social respect,

i) access to power.

The notion of need contains, in turn, consumption and non-consumption needs. Meeting of the former ones make us use goods (either market goods or those produced in our own farm) and services offered by social and economic institutions. Meeting the latter needs means to realise the accepted system of values, if set the conscious concepts of what is desirable, typical for an individual or a group; the values that influence the choice of accessible ways, means and goals of action (Hałasiewicz, Kaleta 1997).

Looking at this question from sociological perspective, we have to admit the lack of an objective tool to measure the needs, consumption needs included. The goods (services) which meet the needs of someone at one time, not necessarily meet the same needs of someone else in a different situation. The evaluation of meeting both consumption and non-consumption needs is closely connected with the social position of an individual, who constantly compares her/his needs with the standards typical for social position he/she takes. Thus the measuring of living conditions and needs is always marked by some dose of subjectivism, and it contains a number of problems we will not be able to take into account in our work. We will concentrate on the most universal and objective aspects of living conditions and needs of rural population which are still heavily affected by the situation of agricultural farms

.

Living conditions and Polish farms

Even though the number of farmers in rural area is decreasing, and the number of non-farmers living there is growing (respectively 16% and 14% in the first three years of system transformation) there were still 2041 thousand active farms in this region in 1996. Most of them were small farms. Over 2/3 (68.4%) of them had an area below average (7.9 ha). Only 8.5% of farms had more than 15 ha, but big farms with over 20 ha of arable land, comparable with the German, French, to say nothing of the English, standards, made a minority (4.1%). Thus the 1990s did not bring transformations in the agrarian structure on a larger scale. The progress was rather slight with the coefficient of 0.8 ha, that is the growth in the area of an average farm from 7.1 ha in 1990 to 7.9 ha in 1996 (Statistical Annual for 1997, p. 324). No rapid changes in agrarian structure are predicted till the year 2010 then we may have 1200 farms with an average area of 10 ha (Grochowski 1990, p. 29), and in the year 2020 we are expected to have 1600 farms with an area of 8 ha (Woś 1995, p. 80). In this context a positive symptom is the lower age level of people working in private agriculture due to taking over most farms by their young successors. On the other hand, the growing number of young farmers may hinder the process of increasing the area of farms since only a small minority of them (27%) intend to buy or lease more land, and 10% even want to sell (let) part of their own land (Szafraniec 1988, p. 309-310). To tell the truth, it should be admitted that no clear relationship has been noticed before the area of a farm and its economic condition. The early experience of transformation shows that traditional ways of measuring the agrarian structure of the Polish agriculture on the basis of area criterion have appeared to be outdated, and the economic criterion is becoming more and more important (Szafraniec 1988, p. 317).

Krzysztof Gorlach and Zygmunt Seręga at the Institute of Sociology UJ, who have been studying the transformation of family farms for many years, assume three options of the future development of family farms. They call the first option a farming option. This option assumes the acceptance of market rules and so-called formal rationality that results from the lack of the state interventionism in agriculture. The effect would be the collapse of many small farms and decrease in agricultural employment. The second option is called by them a Skansen option. This option means to keep the present state of the peasants ownership and to neglect economic rationality. This option is based on a strong orientation to non-economic values, often very traditional, such as land, religion, family, local community, and on dependency from the state interventionism. The third option is an answer to consumers challenge and an attempt to build a family ecological farming. This option assumes the reject of the hitherto standards of economy and re-orientation of behaviour patterns. A greater hazard and greater labour intake will require, on the one hand, a limited state interventionism and promotion of middle and small farms which would be able to produce high quality products that would be able to compete with mass food production. On the other hand, this option will require more intensive effort subordinated to thinking in categories of the spirit of enterprise (Gorlach, Seręga 1993, p. 23-26).

Generally the 1990s were the hard times for the Polish agriculture, and it was analysed in the literature on the subject both in terms of its causes and symptoms, and in terms of farmers coping with not very favourable for them, conditions of market economy. The clash between farmers and the reality of transformation period was the more painful as the last years of the real socialism were, according to many farmers who not necessarily should be wrong, very favourable for agriculture (Kłopot 1996, p. 17). The reason was that the shortage of industrial consumption goods increased the demand in the market of agricultural products, and as a result, in the years 1986-1990, the nominal growth in the farmers income was higher than that in non-agricultural sector. The research carried out by Andrzej Kwieciński shows explicitly, that the par of farmers families income in that time exceeded 100 points (1986 115, 1987 166.3, 1988 123.3, 1989 115.3, 1990 102.5), whereas in 1991 it started falling steadily to reach the rate never met before 77 points (Kwieciński 1994, p. 83). Researchers of the problem find many reasons for such a remarkable fall in the income on agricultural activity, which was also noticeable after 1995 (Balcerowicz 1995, Wilkin 1994). The reasons include: first of all, the balance of industrial consumption goods reached as early as in 1990, and a great fall in the real incomes, which resulted in decrease in the demand for agricultural consumption products (Woś 1993); then the increased food import as a result of opening the whole economy to the foreign markets which ended up with a relative fall in prices of agricultural products. In addition to this, the state stopped subsidies to the means of agricultural production and services which caused a rapid increase of their prices. This became a real problem in the face of lower incomes in agriculture (Kwieciński 1994, Lisowski 1992, Woś 1994).

Farmers try to adapt to this difficult situation in different ways. The study Framers '92 carried out with the participation of national sample of farmers (1000 owners of farms with an area over 0.5 ha) shows that a great majority of respondents are the follower of such a model of agriculture in which there is place for family farms with greater area than at present, and in which the state guarantees the purchase of agricultural products. They would also like to have mechanisms to set minimal prices for agricultural products, which would be profitable for average farms. At the same time the respondents were against market mechanisms and huge farms, both private and state ones. The respondents opinions seem to explain why only 20-30% of them try to adapt to the changed situation (specialisation, production for contracted purchaser, interest in investment, purchase of additional land). Most of them (50-55%) are either waiting for a change, producing in their farms for the needs of family mainly and not for the market (self-catering function of a farm), or they accept the strategy of withdrawal (10-15% of older farmers who own smaller farms) and sell or let their land (Rosner 1995, p. 8-14).

The results of the research carried out in 1994 by Zygmunt Seręga were more optimistic. The sample of 800 farmers declared their intention to cope with the worsening conditions of work and life in rural area by (Seręga 1995, p. 38):

taking extra job beyond the farm 48%,

restrictions on family shopping 30.6%,

working harder in the farm 26%,

selling or letting part of the farm land 25.5%,

taking a loan 16.8%,

selling part of machines and farm equipment 4.9%,

giving up the education of their children 3.0%,

selling part of the house appliances 0.9%.

The above list seems to suggest that in the later phase of transformation process (after 1994), farmers accepted more active strategies of economic behaviour and tended to give up passive waiting for whatever the future brings.

In her study, Krystyna Szafraniec, who analysed the part of research Poles 95 devoted to rural population, found out that the later stage of transformation process brought more active attitudes among farmers. These attitudes seem something new when compared to the tendencies in 1992. What they planned to do most frequently was to develop the hitherto agricultural production (60.6%), to start a specialised production (34.5%), to produce ecological food (40.6%), to look for the purchasers and produce according to their demand (37.5%), to buy or lease extra farming land (27.3%). And here again waiting, passiveness and conservative opinions are more rare (Szafraniec 1998, p. 318).

A similar conclusion can be drawn from the study carried out by Sławomir Zawisza who, in the years 1993-1995, asked 617 farmers in central and northern regions of Poland mainly, about the future of their farms. Almost half of them (42.3%) said they had successor to take over their farms. For 16% of younger farmers future was still too far away to say something definite about it, and only 40.5% of the respondents could say nothing about the future of their farms (Zawisza 1997, p. 21).

Unemployment and poverty

If we find the results of the research unquestionable, there is group of non-agricultural rural population who find themselves in even more difficult situation than farmers. This group makes 52% of the total rural population (Andrychowicz 1995, Frenkel 1995). The research project Poles '95 shows that in every fifth non-agricultural rural family everybody is unemployed. Almost half of them get old age or disability pensions, and some 1/5 take advantage of social welfare aid or unemployed benefits fund. For 25% of non-agricultural population this old age or disability pension and unemployed benefit are the main source of income. Suma sumarum, circa 75% of non-agricultural rural population rely on different forms of social aid and social welfare protection. In addition, half of those who have jobs admit that they work for companies whose future is far from being optimistic. The same proportion of people expect the loss of work and find it almost impossible to find a new job because of a very limited local labour market and because of their own very poor or useless qualifications (Szafraniec 1998, p. 314).

Their anxiety is proved in full by the Labour Agencies registers which show that in November 1996 there were 707 thousand unemployed people in rural area (Statistical Annual for 1997, p. 145), thus the unemployment rate was then 10.7%. Let us remark, however, that the data on unemployment in rural area presented by different publications are, as a rule, not very precise, and the differences we find between different sources result from the differences in defining the unemployed.

This problem seemed important to Izasław Frenkel from the Institute of Rural Area and Agriculture Development, so he compared basic coefficients referring to rural unemployment from the two sources, that is from registers of the unemployed kept by the Labour Agencies and data achieved during the Research into the Economic Activity of Population carried out by the Main Statistical Board with the use of a representative method. It appears from his analyses that the unemployment rate in rural area has always been lower than that in the city (1992 in the city 15.8%, in rural area 10.3%, 1993 respectively 16.9% and 12.0%, 1994 14.8% and 12.4%, 1995 13.7% and 12.2%, 1996 12.0% and 10.7%). These data, again, were influenced by the accepted definition of an unemployed person, which excluded from a category of the unemployed even those people who worked hardly one hour a week, which occurs most frequently in rural farms. For the same reason, by the way, the unemployment rate in these farms is many times lower than in non-agricultural households (according to the 1993 data over four times lower, respectively 6.2% and 25.0%). More essential seems to be the fact, however, that the increase in unemployment in rural area was higher than in the city, and as a result of this an unemployment rate in rural area made some 64% of the unemployed rate in urban area in 1996, and in 1996 this share grew to circa 82%. The same author also attempted to estimate the size of current and potential reserves of labour force in the Polish agriculture, and found that there are 2.7-2.8 million people ready to take jobs (Frenkel 1997, p. 65-86). It makes about 75% of the unemployed in agriculture or, according to the GUS statistics, 26% of the total professionally active population (Zawisza 1997). Indirect confirmation of this scope of hidden unemployment in agriculture was found by the national research project in rural area done in 1994. It showed that only 8.2% respondents thought of themselves as unemployed, which made 12%, compare to the unemployed professionally active people and was equal to the level of officially registered unemployment. However, at the same time about 40% of these respondents declared having unemployed members in their families, both registered and not registered, we can guess. Such declarations appeared relatively more often in families which did not have farming land (Łapińska-Tyszka 1995, p. 93).

The literature on this subject presents two types of opinions referring the reasons for rural unemployment in the period of transformation. The predominant ones are the regress of so-called di-professionality, closing down the state farms, decrease in the national food demand mentioned before, increase in food import, closing down most of rural co-operatives and extensive fall in employment in agricultural services (Borowicz, Łapińska-Tyszka 1993, Borowicz 1993, Ignar 1992, Sulimski 1992, Situation… 1994). For Grzegorz Zabłocki from the Institute of Sociology at Nicolas Copernicus University in Toruń, the key problem to define the causes of unemployment in rural area seems to be the specificity of rural area s position in the system on the national labour division, the resources available, responsibilities and duties performed in social system. That is why rural and agricultural unemployment is less a by-product of transformation and the attempt to adapt the Polish rural area and agriculture to market economy. It is, first of all, the result of the following permanent features of rural area:

geographical diffusion which causes that the investments located there are less competitive because of the lack of a scale effect and concentrated demand which made rural are to be less attractive as a ready market;

a low profit level on agricultural activity, much lower than in non-agricultural sectors of economy, due to economic conditions created by the state;

a low level of the rural population competence as for political activity, their poor education, as well as their falling share in the total population, which with the democratic mechanisms of authority election causes that rural population has fewer representatives in the state institutions;

civilizational backwardness and growing acceptance for worse living conditions;

a worse position in the mutual exchange of offers and labour division; for example, few lawyers and economists living in rural area who could represent the interests of their local communities in a competent way (in 1990, in rural communal councils hardly one out of sixty councillors was an economist or a lawyer, which means that in some 70% of these elected bodies there was not a single councillor who presented the above qualifications);

tendency for local authority elites to evolve into cliques or coteries that become an easy tool to control the non-conformable members of local communities (Zabłocki 1997, p. 71-73).

Unemployment as the research carried out in 1997 by the Institute of Sociology NCU under the commission of the World Bank shows, lasts because of the low mobility of labour force, particularly of young people who show a low level of life aspirations and a syndrome of taught helplessness as well as poor health condition (often due to alcohol abuse). Another important factor to hinder mobility is lower accommodation costs in rural area and the opportunity to cultivate small plots of land to plant vegetables, also the chance to get seasonal jobs in agriculture and public works. All these make the jobs that require permanent, temporary or pendular migration less attractive. Apart from this, the opportunity to get an unemployed benefit which is not much lower than an average pay, also contributes to decreasing mobility because looking for a job which is paid at the level of the official minimum pay becomes unprofitable. All this is accompanied by inability to compete in the labour market due to the lack of proper qualifications. Rural population usually complete trade education in professions which are not necessarily required in the area they live in. They also miss general knowledge or particular skills which would help them compete for the jobs and training in private sector mainly (Shahriari and others 1998, p. 1-7).

A shallow labour market in non-agricultural sectors does not help to solve the problem of rural unemployment very much. It can be seen from the data collected by the European Institute of Regional and Local Development (survey into 819 communes with the population of no more than 50 thousand people) that in 1996, compared to 1995, new jobs were created in more or less one third of communes (in western provinces in every second commune) and in more or less one fourth of the communes, the number of available jobs decreased. Urban communes had much better coefficient (in 50.6% the number of jobs grew, in 24.3% it did not change, in 25.2%, the number of jobs fell) than rural communes (respectively 34.2%, 41.1%, 24.7%). The same study shows that in the surveyed communes there still is a high unemployment rate (16.3%, the highest unemployment rate of 21.6% is noticed in the Western Regions where state farms used to be located, the lowest unemployment is found in southern Poland, where small farms dominated, thus we can guess that this sector performs a function of repository for people dismissed from work in non-agricultural sectors). Forecasts about the future unemployment seem pretty pessimistic (it is predicted to be higher in 32.2% of communes, 18% of communes expect to have lower unemployment, and 48.5% think that unemployment rate will not change). Particularly rural communes are pessimistic about their future and twice as often as rural urban communes, they see their future in black colours. The fact that in 60% of the surveyed communes some 10% of workers take jobs without work permit does not improve this image very much. In the remaining communes the number of people working without work permit is said to be even higher, which means that a remarkable smaller proportion of people is left without any job (Gorzelak, Jałowiecki 1997, p. 9-12).

The most important effect of unemployment is poverty which, when the criterion of poverty line is applied, affects 6% of the Polish society, including 9% of farmers families and 6% of rural non-agricultural families. According to other estimations, in 1989, 22% of family farms were in the zone of poverty, and their number grew in consecutive years: 1990 42%, 1991 45%, 1992 50% (Michna 1992).

The research project carried out by the Institute of Sociology NCU, mentioned before, shows that poverty is also an effect (apart from unemployment) of low incomes reached from small, not very efficient farms, of disfunctionality of some families and deeply rooted poverty inherited from generation to generation (Shahriari and others 1998, p. 107).

The most tragical symptom of poverty is the situation of some rural children who sometimes suffer form hunger and malnutrition. Let us say, that according to some respondents in the survey for the World Bank, they are not able to give children even one meal. Instead of meals children are offered tea or warm water. There were families who lived on potatoes only for several weeks because they ran out of food, they had no income and, because of debts in the local shops, they could not buy anything on credit. Negligence of children was a phenomenon met even more often than malnutrition. Rural children suffer from teeth decay, they are dirty and wear dirty clothes, and they often are poor pupils and have to learn for two years in the same class. For some families it was too expensive to buy the set of school books, copybooks and stationery necessary for their children to learn. It happened that parents brought children to school without a schoolbag and even a single copybook or a pencil. Sometimes sportshoes bought in September for physical education classes had to be worn by children for the whole following year even though they were badly worn. Deficiencies in a school equipment are the cause of humiliation by friends and even sometimes teachers. Sometimes children did not come to school in winter because they did not have boots or took turns to wear them with another member of the family. On the other hand, the same survey showed inefficiency and make-believe character of the actions for the sake of the poor children undertook by social welfare or local authorities for example holiday leisure for the poorest organised by the youth organisations, foundations, churches or the Agency of Agricultural Property of the State Treasure do not solve any problems but cause the labelling of these few who take advantage of this form of help by the peer group (Zabłocki 1998).

Final remark

The presented materials based on sociological research carried out in the 1990s generally show very difficult living conditions of rural population and serious limitations in the meeting many of their consumption needs when compared, for example, with inhabitants of big urban centres.

It is worth emphasising, however, that the surveys we analysed, particularly those carried out in the later phase of the system transformation (after 1994) bring also data which clearly show symptoms of new thinking and new action among a remarkably big part of rural population, which are more and more adequate for the reality of market economy and civil society. Among them we can certainly find:

· noticeable predominance of strategies of economic activity among farmers and more active behaviours of farmers instead of passive waiting for what future will bring;

· high level of rural enterprise, fully comparable to that in urban areas which goes far beyond the level noticed in other post-socialist countries;

· growing awareness of education importance as the pre-condition of life success, which results in concern about childrens education;

· more common belief in the change in the state role and independent problems solving first of all problems connected with communal and social infrastructure through active support for structures of local government.

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