DETERMINANTS OF MILK PRODUCTION DIVERSITY IN THE MACROREGIONS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

The paper aims to distinguish economic determinants of milk production in clusters of FADN regions with farms similar to each other in terms of total utilized agricultural area, number of milk cows and annual milk yield in the light of selected taxonomic methods, i.e. cluster and factor analysis. Observed by the analysis of standard deviations and Gini coefficients, increasing diversity of the majority of characteristics of FADN dairy farms (in 2011 relative to 2004) led to think that production in farms similar to each other in terms of the number of dairy cows, the amount of utilized agricultural area and an annual milk yield can be conditioned by similar determinants, which may differ depending on the membership in a particular group. Classification of groups of regions with similar dairy farms was made using cluster analysis, and the diversification of production determinants was illustrated on the basis of factor analysis in the distinguished clusters. In order to determine the variability distinguished determinants analysis was performed for two research periods (years 2011 and 2013).