Operation of agri-food clusters on the ecological agricultural market in Poland

Abstract

This paper seeks to assess the level of development of Polish ecological agri-food clusters in terms of the country’s potential of organic farming, ecological processing of farm products, and the distribution of food produced with the help of ecological methods. Despite the upsurge of interest in clustering observed in Poland in the first decade of the 21st century as well as the growing number of clusters and intensive development of organic farming, it was found that agri-food clusters embracing entities producing ecological food were still of marginal significance. At the start of 2014 there were only two: the Ecological Food Valley Cluster and the Kujavia-Pomerania Cluster, a division of Ekoland, the Association of Food Producers Using Ecological Methods. The assessment of the operation of those clusters shows unequivocally that the process of building ecological agri-food clusters only just starts in Poland. Today clustering still utilises the potential of Polish organic farming to a very small extent.