Waking up to the European dream: The shifting landscapes of Polish organic farming

This research examines the implementation of multifunctional agri-environmental policies for organic farming within the Polish organic farm sector, in the context of Poland's 2004 accession to the European Union. Various studies of organic agriculture indicate that in the face of market forces, organic farming in some cases has been subject to "conventionalization," reproducing many elements of the conventional agricultural system (e.g. Guthman 2004). Yet within the European Union, multifunctional policy mechanisms purport to mitigate the blunt force of the market as well as provide multiple social and environmental goods for European citizens through subsidization and favorable policy initiatives. This work explores how these policy mechanisms influence the Polish organic farming sector in Poland, in the face of unprecedented social and economic change.;The findings of this work indicate that as new EU Common Agricultural multifunctional policy regulations are put in place in Poland, reforms associated with EU accession---and, particularly, the manner in which these reforms are implemented---have created both new opportunities and unanticipated vulnerabilities for Polish organic farmers. While new subsidy structures have created favorable circumstances for a significant increase in the rate of entry into the organic farm sector, other aspects of policy mechanisms create barriers to access within the organic sector, particularly for resource poor farmers. Also, while multifunctional European Union agri-environmental policies support entry for many into the organic farm sector, the absence of attention toward structural development of market pathways leaves many new organic farmers especially vulnerable, potentially affecting their long-term viability. EU policy mechanisms also generate apparent contradictions: while EU rhetoric lauds organic farming, inattention to how policies are implemented in specific social, cultural, geographic, and economic contexts may compromise the strength of existing organic farm sector. Moreover, subsidies for organic farming have in some instances promoted an emergent trend toward land speculation by non-farmers on agricultural land. Nevertheless, this research concludes that EU supports for organic farming in Poland provide novel and important support and suggests that valuable refinement of policies might be achieved through a consideration of local complexity and through radically collaborative dialogue between organic farmers and policymakers.