ABSTRACT
At the beginning of social and economic transformation in Poland, special opportunities for rural development were perceived as consisting, in particular, of the use of environmental assets and the existing agricultural structure of farming. The large number of private, small-scale, family-owned farms managed in a traditional way and the attractive and, to a significant degree, undeveloped environment are factors that should stimulate the development of agritourism (McMahon, 1996; Hall, 2004; Hegarty and Przezbórska, 2005; Drzewiecki, 2009; Sznajder et al., 2009). When promoting organic farming and the combination of such activities with tourism in organic agritourist farms, Jadwiga Łopata, who founded the European Centre for Ecological Agriculture and Tourism in Poland in 1993, claimed that ‘Poland, in particular, has everything needed to follow an organic path of development. Beautiful landscape, natural resources, 2.5 million private farms and quite a lot of good farmers. Poland should become a democratic country with a good organic programme’. In this chapter an attempt has been made to evaluate the use of existing natural and cultural potential for the development of organic agritourism activities in Poland. Responses have been sought to the following question: is that development adequate to actual opportunities and needs, and if so, then to what degree? Apart from the quantitative particulars and the spatial distribution of organic agritourist farms, this chapter specifies the most essential conditions and factors that determine the development of organic agritourism activities. An attempt has also been made herein to assess the significance of organic agritourism activities in Poland. The source materials used herein are primary and secondary. The primary sources of information include the survey questionnaires that were sent to all farms that stated that they carry out organic agritourism activities in 2010. Prior to that, due to the absence of a single, up-to-date and complete list of such farms, a list of organic agritourist farms had been developed using the data made available by the Agricultural Consultancy Centre in Brwinów (Centrum Doradztwa Rolniczego), the European Centre for Ecological and Agricultural Tourism in Poland and also on the websites of individual holdings. Among all 125 farms declaring themselves to be organic agritourist farms, 41 farms (33 per cent of the farms included in the list) completed the survey questionnaires and returned them. In addition, much primary information that has been significantly important for the research and its outcomes was collected during expert opinion surveys conducted with the representatives of governmental bodies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that coordinate the development of agritourism activities or organic agritourism activities in Poland – the Centrum Doradztwa Rolniczego (Agricultural Consultancy Centre) in Brwinów, the vice-president of the European Centre for Ecological and Agricultural Tourism (ECEAT) in Poland, the president of the Mazowieckie Wierzby Association of Agritourist and Organic Farms, and the organic food producers, as well as the owners of organic agritourist holdings. Apart from the abovementioned questionnaire surveys and expert opinion surveys, the most important research method applied in this chapter is SWOT analysis. This method allowed for the strengths and weaknesses of Polish organic agritourism activities to be determined and opportunities for their further development to be assessed. The secondary sources of information used in this chapter include, in particular, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Inspectorate for Trade Quality of Agricultural and Food Products (Główny Inspektorat Jakości Handlowej Artykułów Rolno-Spożywczych) in Warsaw, and the Agricultural Consultancy Centre (Centrum Doradztwa Rolniczego) in Brwinów.
