Rural Solidarity

Last updated

Rural Solidarity (full name Independent Self-governing Trade Union of Individual Farmers "Solidarity") is a trade union of Polish farmers, established in late 1980 as part of the growing Solidarity movement. Its legalization became possible on February 19, 1981, when officials of the government of the People's Republic of Poland signed the so-called Rzeszów - Ustrzyki Dolne Agreement with striking farmers. Previously, Communist government had refused farmers’ right to self-organize, which caused widespread strikes, with the biggest wave taking place in January 1981. The Rural Solidarity was officially recognized on May 12, 1981, [1] [2] and, strongly backed by the Catholic Church of Poland, it claimed to represent at least half of Poland's 3.2 million smallholders. [3]

Contents

Background

After World War II, Poland became a communist country, a satellite of the Soviet Union. Since collective farming is a key component of communist notion of agriculture, in June 1948, the Polish United Workers' Party decided to begin the process. From the very beginning, compulsory collectivization faced strong resistance of Polish farmers, who did not want to give up their land. Despite using different methods of persuasion, the progress was slow. [4] By 1951, only 1% of arable land was collectivized, with some 23 000 farmers working there. Altogether, in that year there were some 2200 collective farms. Most of them were located in western and northern Poland, in the Recovered Territories, where population consisted of people resettled from former eastern borderlands of Poland.

After the Polish October, Władysław Gomułka officially declared that private farms were part of the so-called "Polish road to Socialism" and the government gradually changed its stance. In the late 1950s, number of collective farms fell to 1 800, and Poland was the only country of the Soviet Bloc which tolerated private ownership of the arable land. In 1958, Moscow ordered the resumption of collectivization, but unlike her neighbors, Poland refused. [5] By 1960, collectivization in Poland was ended, never to be resumed, [6] and Engels' opinion that peasants would spontaneously create collective forms of agricultural production because of the threat of the big landed estates was not confirmed in Poland. [7]

Preservation of individual agriculture was a key factor in future events. Nevertheless, forced collectivization of farmland had disastrous consequences, as Poland, traditionally a grain exporter, had to import food, including grain, to prevent famine. [8]

Origins of the Rural Solidarity

In August 1980, workers of the Vladimir Lenin Gdańsk Shipyard began a strike, which resulted in creation of Solidarity (see: History of Solidarity). After this event, a group of farmers, gathered in the Farmers Self-Defence Committees decided to set up their own, parallel union called Rural Solidarity. [9] At that time, other similar farmers organizations emerged, such as Peasants Solidarity and Union of Agricultural Producers Solidarity. Their objectives were:

On September 24, 1980, representatives of Polish individual farmers submitted documents to the Warsaw Provincial Court for registration as Rural Solidarity. However, after one month, at the end of October, the court ruled that private farmers were self-employed and as such, were not entitled to organize their own labor union. The disappointed farmers turned to the Supreme Court. [9]

On November 30, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Andrzej Kacala met with a group of 30 representatives of farmers' unions founding committees from the Warsaw, Lublin, Siedlce, Skierniewice, and Wałbrzych Voivodeships, as well as from the Września Konin, Golub-Dobrzyń Kujawy, and the Holy Cross Mountains regions. The representatives informally called themselves Rural Solidarity. [10]

Supported by Lech Wałęsa and the factory workers, the farmers organized on December 14, 1980, the founding congress of Rural Solidarity in Warsaw. It was attended by 1000 delegates, who represented around 600 000 private farmers. Among their demands, there was a call for formal registration of their independent union. However, on December 30, 1980, the Supreme Court announced that its ruling on Rural Solidarity had been postponed. [11] As a result, tensions rose rise between the peasants and local governments across the country.

Creation of the organization

Southeastern part of Poland was the area in which individual farmers were very numerous and where position of the Roman Catholic Church was the strongest. Therefore, in early 1981, main center of farmers’ protests was established in the city of Rzeszów, where the strike and the sit-in began on January 5, 1981, and where the center of the movement was established. [3] As Time magazine reported on Monday, February 2, 1981, members of Solidarity and Rural Solidarity occupied "Headquarters of the old official trade union" (in fact, it was The House of the Railroad Worker [12] ), where they placed a sign which said: "SOLIDARITY IS MORE THAN JUST A NAME". The united front of both organizations demanded negotiations toward legitimizing the farmers' union. [13]

Other centers of farmers protests were also located in southeastern Poland, in the towns of Ustrzyki Dolne and Nowy Sącz, but Solidarity members had been evicted from occupied buildings there. It must be noticed that the Solidarity trade union, and its leaders, such as Lech Wałęsa, fully supported demands of it the peasants. As one Solidarity official said, "We got in touch with our people in all of the major factories around here and let them know that if the police interfered here there would be a general strike without further notice". [13]

Rzeszów-Ustrzyki Agreement

At the beginning of 1981, peasants striking in Rzeszów joined forces with their comrades from Ustrzyki Dolne, who had been on strike since December 28, 1980, occupying the local government office. The strike in Ustrzyki became known across the country. In different locations in Poland, several strikes broke out (including a hunger strike in Świdnica [14] ), and on February 18, 1981, negotiations began. The peasants were helped by such personalities, as Lech Wałęsa, Andrzej Gwiazda, Andrzej Stelmachowski and Jadwiga Staniszkis. [12] Also, among supporters of the peasants, was Primate Stefan Wyszyński, who on February 6, 1981, confirmed "the right of the farmers to found freely their own associations". [15]

The Rzeszów-Ustrzyki Agreement was signed in the night of February 18/19 (in Ustrzyki) and February 20 (in Rzeszów). The government, represented by Minister of Agriculture Andrzej Kacala, did not give permission to creation of a free trade union of the peasants, but legal protection of inheritance of land was confirmed. Other concessions included permission to construct more churches in the countryside and promise of equal treatment of individual farmers. Another concession won by the farmers was the government's promise to reduce its "pleasure lands" and reduce the number of facilities selling alcohol. [15] Nevertheless, the state refused to register the organization, stating that the farmers were not wage earners and therefore could not be unionized. [16]

The Agreement was signed by Minister Kacala, who represented the Government, and Jozef Slisz, Jan Kulaj, Antoni Kopaczewski, Bogdan Lis and Lech Wałęsa. Due to its significance, it is sometimes called the "Constitution of the Polish Countryside". [17]

Legalization of Rural Solidarity

However, Rural Solidarity was not legalized until May 12, 1981, after another farmers strike, this time in Bydgoszcz, where it resulted in a major incident, which sparked off the 1981 warning strike in Poland. Its first leader became Jan Kułaj, and the union was banned on December 13, 1981 (see: Martial Law in Poland). Among those who supported restoration of the Rural Solidarity, was Pope John Paul II, who called for it during his 1987 visit to Poland, saying: "A Pope cannot remain quiet about this even if he were not a Pole". [18]

Rural Solidarity returned in 1989 (see: Polish Round Table Agreement), and has existed since then. Among its leaders, there are Gabriel Janowski, Artur Balazs, Roman Bartoszcze, and Roman Wierzbicki.

Solidarity is still an active union and is currently the "largest employee organization in Poland," [19] with and estimated 900,000 members in nearly 12,000 organized work committees. [20] The National Delegate Assembly, governing body, holds annual assemblies as well: The National Commission and The National Audit Committee. The President of the National Commission is Piotr Duda. [20] Solidarity also has an online website where they have a "trade union and employee magazine" that is published weekly. [21] The magazine is called Tygodnik Solidarność and, from a 2007 study conducted at the National Congress of Delegates in Legnica, it was found that as much as "90 percent [of] trade unionists get information about Solidarity from Tygodnik." [21]

Activities and Protests (2004 - 2016)

Following Poland joining the European Union May 1 of 2004, [22] land became purchasable by non-Polish citizens. [23] Many farmers in Poland rely on leasing land "in order to raise income levels" [24] as the cost to purchase is often too high for them, [25] with some of the “smallest farms hav[ing] an equal share of own[ed] and leased land.” [26] Smaller farms sized 10.1 to 15.0 ha leased 25.24% of their land, 30.1 to 50.0 ha leased 34.20%, 50.1 to 100.0 ha leased 38.27%, and 300.1 to 500.0 ha sized farms leased 59.44%. [26] Due to the cost, many citizens "vehemently opposed" [24] Polish agricultural land that was owned by the state, and being leased to farmers, [27] becoming purchasable, as Poland's agricultural land is overall valued less than land from other EU countries, with one hectare of arable land [28] in Poland being €5,000 on the low end and €15,000 on the higher end, while countries like the Netherlands averaging €69,632 per hectare of land as of 2019. Farmers and citizens also "recognise[d] that national food security is dangerously undermined by such sales. Keeping agricultural land in perpetuity for future generations is critically important for the food security of the nation as well as for the health and welfare of its citizens." [24] In order to prevent this from happening, non-Polish citizens were required to have a permit in order to purchase land. [23] Foreign companies were still able to acquire land through the use of "substitute buyers," Polish citizens that purchase and then hand over the land to foreign companies. [29]

Farmers opposed the sale of leasable land and began protesting from the 5th of December 2012 onwards, [30] with Solidarity spearheading the movement stating that "In the times of Communism, 70% of land was State owned. Just 20 years later and Polish farmers cannot buy land anymore. Most of it has landed in the hands of foreigners – mainly Danes and Americans.” [30] Protesters blocked roads [31] with "Rallies and blockades [had] taken place in over 50 locations across the country involving thousands of small and family farmers," and government ministries were picketed. [32]

On February 19, 2015, in Warsaw, Solidarity was joined by community groups, local protest committees, regional and national unions such as the union for beekeepers, coal miners and nurses on strike at the time. [33] Protesters blocked the Agricultural Property Agency as well as set up encampments "outside the prime minister's palace and ha[d] vowed to remain until their demands [were] met." [33] A combined total of 6,000 protesters were in attendance, [33] making it "the single largest farmers protest to have ever taken place in Poland." [34] Furthermore, 50 other locations were also being occupied by protesters, with 150 tractors blockading roads. [31] The goal of the protesters' were to push for more legislation that addressed the following concerns on...

  1. Land grabs by Western companies as from 2016 onwards, foreign buyers would legally be able to buy Polish land directly. [33]
  2. The legalization of direct sale of farm produce, as well as the loosening of laws around farm processed food products. [33] [35]
  3. Ban the use of Genetically Modified Organisms in Poland. [33] [32]
  4. Regulation in order to ensure farmers are compensated for losses experienced due to government and EU "negligent policies towards quotas, control of wild animals and trade embargoes. [33]

At the February 19th protest, Jadwiga Lopata, a family farmer and the co-director of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC), said during an interview that “welfare of the nation depends on consumers and farmers having access to traditional seeds and good quality food. The Polish government does not accept this and is destroying the roots of Polish agriculture by listening to corporations rather than Polish people.” [33] Family farmers Maria and Mariusz Nowak from Zachodniopomorskie shared a similar sentiment stating that, “We should withdraw our membership of the European Union and recover our national food self-sufficiency [food sovereignty]. It is crazy that we import products we can produce here – Our products are better quality and are healthier. The government is undermining Polish farmers and needs to resign!” [33] Food sovereignty was something also addressed at the movement, which would be more easily obtainable through access to land. [35] The legalization of the direct sale, as well as the softened laws and regulations surrounding farm processed goods, would also affect food sovereignty. [35] Farmers were arrested during the protests, with some facing the possibility of "five-TEN years imprisonment." [24]

On October 25, 2015, general elections were held and on the 27th of October it was announced that the Law and Justice party won with a majority vote of 37.585, and 242 seats. [36] The state election authority in Poland also announced that they had won "235 seats in the 460-seat lower house of Poland’s parliament, meaning it has a majority and can govern alone." [37] The party is right-wing with "Catholic conservative morality." [37] The party had garnered support due to their plan to implement "higher taxes on large corporations and banks while doing more to help smaller Polish businesses and families, such as monthly family cash bonuses for children and free medication for people aged over 75." [37] The Law and Justice party was also "responding positively to the [farmers] campaign and adopt[ed] key elements of its agenda." [35] The party also "recogni[zed] food sovereignty as a fundamental citizen's right." [35] Upon the party being elected, the farmers imprisoned were also immediately released without charge. [35]

With the assistance of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC), their chairman, farmers and other political movement groups such as the Kukiz'15, as well as parliament, work began on the new Food Act "that [would] spell out farmer friendly' supply and demand conditions that are critical to the survival of family farming traditions in Poland." [35]

In an interview in March 2016, Krzysztof Jurgiel, Poland's minister of agriculture, stated that “Land is a national good, and it should be in family farms, for the most part cultivated or managed by Poles and Polish farmers." [38] [39] Later in April of the same year, the government announced a new law that would make it harder to use the previously mentioned workarounds, to purchase land in Poland. [38] However, a new issue arose due to EU "rules forbid[ding] national discrimination," and as such it forces "the new law to include tough restrictions on [all] land sales and ownership, which make it difficult for most Poles, as well as foreigners, to buy farmland." [38] The intent of the new law was, as speculated by a Polityka Insight analyst, Piotr Semeniuk, "to keep the current structure of Polish farming, with mainly fairly small family farms." [38]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solidarity (Polish trade union)</span> 20th-century Polish trade union

Solidarity, full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity", is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state. The union's membership peaked at 10 million in September 1981, representing one-third of the country's working-age population. Solidarity's leader Lech Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and the union is widely recognised as having played a central role in the end of Communist rule in Poland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Via Campesina</span> International agricultural organization

La Vía Campesina is an international farmers organization founded in 1993 in Mons, Belgium, formed by 182 organisations in 81 countries, and describing itself as "an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collectivization in the Soviet Union</span> Forced economic reforms of collective ownership of the means of production

The Soviet Union introduced the collectivization of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into nominally collectively-controlled and openly or directly state-controlled farms: Kolkhozes and Sovkhozes accordingly. The Soviet leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase the food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for the processing industry, and agricultural exports via state-imposed quotas on individuals working on collective farms. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution that had developed from 1927. This problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program, meaning that more food needed to be produced to keep up with urban demand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in the Soviet Union</span> Overview of agriculture in the Soviet Union

Agriculture in the Soviet Union was mostly collectivized, with some limited cultivation of private plots. It is often viewed as one of the more inefficient sectors of the economy of the Soviet Union. A number of food taxes were introduced in the early Soviet period despite the Decree on Land that immediately followed the October Revolution. The forced collectivization and class war against "kulaks" under Stalinism greatly disrupted farm output in the 1920s and 1930s, contributing to the Soviet famine of 1932–33. A system of state and collective farms, known as sovkhozes and kolkhozes, respectively, placed the rural population in a system intended to be unprecedentedly productive and fair but which turned out to be chronically inefficient and lacking in fairness. Under the administrations of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev, many reforms were enacted as attempts to defray the inefficiencies of the Stalinist agricultural system. However, Marxist–Leninist ideology did not allow for any substantial amount of market mechanism to coexist alongside central planning, so the private plot fraction of Soviet agriculture, which was its most productive, remained confined to a limited role. Throughout its later decades the Soviet Union never stopped using substantial portions of the precious metals mined each year in Siberia to pay for grain imports, which has been taken by various authors as an economic indicator showing that the country's agriculture was never as successful as it ought to have been. The real numbers, however, were treated as state secrets at the time, so accurate analysis of the sector's performance was limited outside the USSR and nearly impossible to assemble within its borders. However, Soviet citizens as consumers were familiar with the fact that foods, especially meats, were often noticeably scarce, to the point that not lack of money so much as lack of things to buy with it was the limiting factor in their standard of living.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Poland (1945–1989)</span> Communist rule in Poland

The history of Poland from 1945 to 1989 spans the period of Marxist–Leninist regime in Poland after the end of World War II. These years, while featuring general industrialization, urbanization and many improvements in the standard of living, were marred by early Stalinist repressions, social unrest, political strife and severe economic difficulties. Near the end of World War II, the advancing Soviet Red Army, along with the Polish Armed Forces in the East, pushed out the Nazi German forces from occupied Poland. In February 1945, the Yalta Conference sanctioned the formation of a provisional government of Poland from a compromise coalition, until postwar elections. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, manipulated the implementation of that ruling. A practically communist-controlled Provisional Government of National Unity was formed in Warsaw by ignoring the Polish government-in-exile based in London since 1940.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Walentynowicz</span> Polish free trade union activist

Anna Walentynowicz was a Polish free trade union activist and co-founder of Solidarity, the first non-communist trade union in the Eastern Bloc. Her firing from her job at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980 was the event that ignited the strike at the shipyard, set off a wave of strikes across Poland, and quickly paralyzed the Baltic coast. The Interfactory Strike Committee (MKS) based in the Gdańsk shipyard eventually transformed itself into Solidarity; by September, more than one million workers were on strike in support of the 21 demands of MKS, making it the largest strike ever.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Independent Students' Association</span>

Independent Students' Association is a Polish student society, created in October 1980, in the aftermath of the Gdańsk Agreement and the anti-government strike actions. It was a student arm, or suborganization, of Solidarity, and together with it, as well as other similar organizations, was banned after the implementation of martial law in Poland. Some activists were arrested, and others organized an underground NZS. After the fall of Communism in 1989, the organization was recreated, and its focus was changed from political to cultural, although it still stands by its origins, as seen by Polish students’ support for the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. It now is the largest independent student organization in Poland, with 90 chapters at Polish universities and a total of 20,000 members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Solidarity</span> History of the Polish trade union

Solidarity, a Polish non-governmental trade union, was founded on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-Communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the Fall of Communism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fighting Solidarity</span> Polish anti-communist organization

Fighting Solidarity was a Polish anti-Soviet and anti-communist organization. It was founded in June 1982 by Kornel Morawiecki in the Polish city of Wrocław. Its creation was in response to the de-legalization of the Solidarity movement and associated communist government repression of the opposition symbolized by the imposition of martial law in 1981. Many consider this faction as one of the most radical and uncompromising splinters of the wider Solidarity movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bydgoszcz events</span> 1981 government crackdown on the leaders of a citywide strike in Bydgoszcz, Poland

The Bydgoszcz events – also referred to as the Bydgoszcz crisis, or the Bydgoszcz provocation – were a series of events in Poland culminating in the beatings of delegates of the Solidarity movement by the forces called upon by the authorities during the session of the voivodship National Council on 19 March 1981, which was to discuss the running strike in Bydgoszcz.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in Cambodia</span>

Agriculture accounts for 22 percent of Cambodia’s GDP, and employs about 3 million people.

In the early spring of 1981 in Poland, during the Bydgoszcz events, several members of the Solidarity movement, including Jan Rulewski, Mariusz Łabentowicz and Roman Bartoszcze, were brutally beaten by the security services, such as Milicja Obywatelska and ZOMO. The Bydgoszcz events soon became widely known across Poland, and on 24 March 1981 Solidarity decided to go on a nationwide strike in protest against the violence. The strike was planned for Tuesday, 31 March 1981. On 25 March, Lech Wałęsa met Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Rakowski of the Polish United Workers' Party, but their talks were fruitless. Two days later, a four-hour national warning strike took place. It was the biggest strike in the history of not only Poland but of the Warsaw Pact itself. According to several sources, between 12 million and 14 million Poles took part.

The Polish People's Republic pursued a policy of agricultural collectivization throughout the Stalinist regime period, from 1948 until the liberalization during Gomułka's thaw of 1956. However, Poland was the unique country in the Eastern Bloc where large-scale collectivization failed to take root. A legacy of collectivization in Poland was the network of inefficient State Agricultural Farms (PGRs), many of which can still be seen in the countryside of modern Poland, especially in its northern and western provinces.

1937 peasant strike in Poland, also known in some Polish sources as the Great Peasant Uprising was a mass strike and demonstration of peasants organized by the People's Party and aimed at the ruling sanacja government. It was the largest political protest in the Second Polish Republic, taking place in 12 voivodeships of the Second Polish Republic. It is estimated that several million peasants took part in the demonstrations, and the strike was supported not only by Polish peasants, but also by the Ukrainian and Belarusian farmers, who made a majority in the eastern part of the Second Polish Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collective farming</span> Type of agricultural organization

Collective farming and communal farming are various types of "agricultural production in which multiple farmers run their holdings as a joint enterprise". There are two broad types of communal farms: agricultural cooperatives, in which member-owners jointly engage in farming activities as a collective, and state farms, which are owned and directly run by a centralized government. The process by which farmland is aggregated is called collectivization. In some countries, there have been both state-run and cooperative-run variants. For example, the Soviet Union had both kolkhozy and sovkhozy.

Agrarian socialism is a political ideology that promotes social ownership of agrarian and agricultural production as opposed to private ownership. Agrarian socialism involves equally distributing agricultural land among collectivized peasant villages. Many agrarian socialist movements have tended to be rural, locally focused, and traditional. Governments and political parties seeking agrarian socialist policies have existed throughout the world, in regions including Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sindicato Labrego Galego-Comisións Labregas</span>

Sindicato Labrego Galego-Comisións Labregas is a Galician farmers' and breeders' union centered on family farms and small peasants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walerian Pańko</span>

Janusz Walerian Pańko was a Polish lawyer, and professor of legal science. An activist of the democratic opposition during the People's Republic of Poland, a member of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland, he died while serving as president of the NIK, Poland's Supreme Audit Office.

References

  1. The Eighties Club. The Politics and Pop Culture of the 1980s
  2. NBC Evening News for Tuesday, May 12, 1981
  3. 1 2 R.J. Crampton, Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, page 372
  4. Agrarian Policies in Communist Europe, page 63
  5. Ivan T. Berend, An Economic History of Twentieth-Century Europe, page 156
  6. The history of Poland, page 139
  7. Sociologia Ruralis, volume 22, Issue 3-4
  8. History of Poland, People's Republic, 1948-1969
  9. 1 2 US Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, page 92
  10. Poland: A Chronology of Events November 1980 - February 1981
  11. The Rise and Fall of the Brezhnev Doctrine, page 172
  12. 1 2 25th Anniversary of the Rzeszow - Ustrzyki Agreement
  13. 1 2 TIME, Monday, February 02, 1981
  14. Ewa Nalewajko, Political Parties and Agriculture in Poland Archived 2006-05-24 at the Wayback Machine
  15. 1 2 The Polish Revolution By Timothy Garton Ash, page 141
  16. A Force More Powerful By Peter Ackerman, Jack DuVall, page 155
  17. Last victims of Stalinism in Poland, interview with Wieńczysław Nowacki
  18. RESTORE RURAL SOLIDARITY, POPE SAYS
  19. "O NSZZ Solidarność - Komisja Krajowa NSZZ Solidarność" (in Polish). 2023-01-13. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  20. 1 2 "Trade unions - Social Dialogue - Gov.pl website". Social Dialogue. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  21. 1 2 "Tygodnik Solidarność - Komisja Krajowa NSZZ Solidarność" (in Polish). 2023-01-13. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  22. "Poland in the EU - Poland in the EU - Gov.pl website". Poland in the EU. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  23. 1 2 "Apply for a permit to acquire real estate, shares, stocks by foreign citizens - Ministry of the Interior and Administration - Gov.pl website". Ministry of the Interior and Administration. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  24. 1 2 3 4 "Polish Farmers Released – On Bail – ICPPC". 2015-11-05. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  25. Bórawski, Piotr; Bełdycka-Bórawska, Aneta; Szymańska, Elżbieta Jadwiga; Jankowski, Krzysztof Józef; Dunn, James W. (2019-03-01). "Price volatility of agricultural land in Poland in the context of the European Union". Land Use Policy. 82: 486–496. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.11.027. ISSN   0264-8377.
  26. 1 2 Marks-Bielska, Renata (2021-03-01). "Conditions underlying agricultural land lease in Poland, in the context of the agency theory". Land Use Policy. 102: 105251. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105251. ISSN   0264-8377.
  27. Marks-Bielska, Renata (2013-01-01). "Factors shaping the agricultural land market in Poland". Land Use Policy. 30 (1): 791–799. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2012.06.003. ISSN   0264-8377.
  28. "Agricultural land prices: huge variation across the EU". ec.europa.eu. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  29. "Land concentration, land grabbing and people's struggles in Europe | Transnational Institute". www.tni.org. 2023-12-05. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  30. 1 2 Kryda, Marek (2014-03-05). "Polish farmer blockades against land grabbing". Agricultural and Rural Convention. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  31. 1 2 Pierrick (2015-02-10). "Polish Farmers Blockade Motorways Across Country : Via Campesina". La Via Campesina - EN. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  32. 1 2 "Polish farmers block motorways for land rights, no GMOs". theecologist.org. 2015-02-09. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  33. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Pierrick (2015-02-19). "Thousands of Polish farmers march in Warsaw : Via Campesina". La Via Campesina - EN. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  34. "EJ Atlas - Polish farmers protest, Poland". ejatlas.org. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  35. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Polish government backs small farmers' and food sovereignty". theecologist.org. 2016-01-25. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  36. "The Law and Justice Party win the parliamentary elections and the absolute majority" (PDF). Robert Schuman Foundation.
  37. 1 2 3 "Rightwing Law and Justice party wins overall majority in Polish election". The Guardian. Associated Press. 2015-10-27. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  38. 1 2 3 4 "Poland raises fences to block farmland sales". POLITICO. 2016-04-25. Retrieved 2023-12-16.
  39. ""Potrzeba naszego narodu to ziemia uprawiana przez fachowców, nieprzechodząca w niepożądane ręce"". www.rmf24.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2023-12-16.