Polskie gospodarstwa mleczne na tle państw członkowskich UE-15

The problem of incomes of Polish farms against a background of UE-15 farms has been analyzed in the study. Deliberations concern farms of the economic size 8-16, 16-40 and 40-100 ESU for the years 2004-2006. The volume of incomes from a farm and differentiation of the income situation in individual EU Member States were analyzed. Moreover, the costs of production, intensity of production and the level of investments were analyzed. The conducted studies made it possible to form the conclusions concerning the income situation of farms in Poland in comparison with the states of the longest seniority in EU. The predominance of Polish farms over the EU-15 farms results mainly from the lower costs of production. Considerably lower costs of production in Poland prove high competitiveness of farms predisposed towards milk production. Moreover, from the conducted studies it results, that milk farms in Poland are characterized by bigger development opportunities, what is shown in decisively higher level of realized net investments and higher rates of reconstruction and increment of fixed assets. However, one should take into account the fact of limitations resulting from the conducted analyses, as three years is a too short period of time to come to too far reaching conclusions, moreover in the years 2004-2006 there were in Poland good economic conditions for milk producers.