ECONOMIC ROLE OF AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVENESS IN POLAND FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CHANGES IN THE FOOD CHAIN

A food supply chain integrates three important economic sectors: agriculture, food processing, and distribution sectors. Integration processes are one out of different ways of efficiency’s improvement of supply chains; they are also the key challenges of contemporary management in the global economy. Common activities of partners in a supply chain can take different forms, starting from general agreements in supply operations, common forecasting and planning of production to cooperation in the field of design and implementation of new products. The aim of the study is to investigate an economic role of agricultural cooperatives in Poland from a perspective of changes in food supply chains. In order to realize it, data of the General Agricultural Census 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development as well as the ranking of the top 500 companies in Poland by “Rzeczpospolita” (2017, 19th edition) were applied. Research results show that a significant number of cooperatives stopped their activities or limited their scale or range after 1989. However, some cooperatives have been developing and as for example dairy cooperatives belong to the top 500 companies in the Polish economy. There is also an increasing trend of establishment of agricultural producer groups, often in a form of cooperatives, that have been observed recently.