The main aim of the survey was to recognize small nad medium-seized enterprises’ pricing policy in Warmia and Mazury province. The survey were carried out in 240 small and medium-seized enterprises in 2006 which were divided according to kind of private activity. The subject of the thesis were aim of price policy, final goods’ purchasers, product price differentiation in comparison to competition, mistakes made in price estimation. The survey pointed out changes in pricing policy of enterprises in Warmia and Mazury province. The aim of pricing policy of trade and multitrade enterprises was the increase of sale, however the productive enterprises were focused on income increase. The majority of service enterprises pointed out product quality as their main aim of pricing policy. The main factors determining the pricing policy in all groups were the cost of production and quality. The majority of products in investigated firms were at the some and lover price level in comparison to competition.

The aim of the research was to recognize and evaluate the effect of some demographic and social-economic features on exotic fruit purchase and consumption. The incidence of correlations and their strength and characteristics were analyzed. The research has been conducted based on the results of questionnaire surveys conducted among Lublin’s inhabitants in 2006. It has been proved that features of consumers such as sex, age, education, income, source of income, type of family have a statistically essential influence on purchase and consumption of exotic fruits like banana, tangerine, orange and grapefruit for the frequency of fruit consumption, purchase places and size of single purchase part.

This article presents the issue of local development. A special attention was paid to the territorial self-government and its instruments which enable to create the local policy. This paper also points out the main areas of territorial self-government influence and contains the analysis of financial aspects of communities in Poland and the structure of their income. This paper indicates the main factors that influence the quality of the community budget. It was analysed the external transfers that where directed from the state budget to communities in the years 1997-2006. This articles also shows the participation of the territorial self-government entity in the central tax (CIT and PIT) in the years 2004-2007.

The author proposes modification of rationale managing rule and gives it as follow: Rational managing rule is a general set of economic ways of profitable proceedings in the clear determined aim condition and operation meaning. The improvement of this aim’s realization could be achieved in the following way by: * keeping the costs in invariable level with simultaneously increasing of production value (way I), * keeping the production value in invariable level with simultaneously decreasing of production costs (way II), * increased the costs with even simultaneously a bigger increasing of production value (way III), * decrease the production value with simultaneously a bigger decreasing of production costs (way IV), * increase the production value with simultaneously decreasing of production costs (way V, short-lived, possible as a result of reorganization of neglected units). In author’s opinion the rational managing rule makes easier, on the one hand, an opinion of existing changes, on the other hand planning the production improvement in short, mid, and long – lived depiction. It allows with economic point of view to concentrate on problems from the past and on these which have short term, operation and strategic meaning. Furthermore, production improvement is for the entity the base giving the chance to exist during the time. In the contemporary macroeconomic condition the economic entity’s success is existing on the market and not to worsen the financial condition. With the all point of view, in the entirely calculus, existing of the economy entity is not only financial profi table but has fi rst of all fundamental social meaning. Predictable escalation of liberalisation in the EU agricultural policy will cause necessity the acceleration of production’s rationalisation in all the farms. In particular it concerns milk farms because of relatively big capital – intensive this production. The decreasing unit cost could be very difficult process, demanding the farming which is based on knowledge. The author is conscious of importance of this problem, and therefore he invites to further discussion.

Participation in UE structures has shown the weakness of the Polish organizations working in agriculture. Many of the institutions, such as The Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture, had to adapt themselves to face the new tasks they were charged with. The aim of the article is to present the evaluation of the ARMA activity, made by the farmers from zambrowski dstrict. The majority of respondents claims that ARMA is a highly needed institution. Many of them think that the positive changes in agriculture are the effects of its activity. In the oppinion of the farmers, ARMA helps polish agriculture to become more competitive on international markets. They also pick out the role of ARMA in adjusting this section of economy to partnership in EU along with integrating polish agriculture with those from other countries.

In the article the results of the questionnaire research about shopping behavior on the food market of people over 50 years old are presented. The research work was carried out in the mazowieckie voivodeship, in 2006, on the sample of 100 respondents. Particularity taken into consideration were such aspects of shopping behavior as: the frequency, places and time of doing shopping, differences between everyday and periodical shopping, conditions of the choice of places of shopping, factors which determine a choice of particular food products, respondents attitudes towards new food products, the influence of promotion on the shopping behavior of the respondents. Analyses which were carried out let define some differences between shopping behavior of people who are 50−59 and older respondents.

The main purpose of this article is to characterize trends dimensions of beef and veal market in Poland in 1990−2006 with respect to stock, production, consumption, prices and Polish international trade of beef and veal. The need for changes of diary sector in Poland affects seeking for alternative solutions allows them further agricultural production based on infrastructure exists in their farms. One of the possibilities is to breed meat cattle. This sector needs support from the government, but also close cooperation between producers and food-processors to aim stronger market position.

The integration of Poland with European Union, the new market conditions and intensification of rivalry induce the Polish agricultural producers to increase of effi ciency, modernization and enlargement of permanent property, extension of farms’ areas. It will permit to enlarge the scale of activity, to reduce average costs as well as to raise competitiveness on national and European market. However, necessary investments require capital, which lacks Polish agricultural farms the most often. Certain possibilities of satisfaction of investment needs of farmers create preferential credits with extra charges from The Agency for Restructuring and Modernisation of Agriculture paid by cooperative banks. The article discusses the role of preferential credit in funding investment of agricultural farms, their development and modernization. The authoress presents on example of 3 farmers from Pomerania the utilization of preferential credits in aim of modernization of agricultural farms and increase their developing possibilities. Introduced examples show, that thanks to subsidized credits from Cooperative Bank agricultural farms achieved necessary investments. This permitted on growth of productive potential of farms as well as increase of their competitiveness.

The paper presents some changes in sector of individual farms in Poland under conditions of market-oriented economy. In the population of all farms is possible to observe the dynamic increase of a farms group without farming activity, and not getting incomes from agricultural productions. As a positive result of changes ones can treate the increase of farms linked to agricultural markets, characterized by higher acreage of farms than other and greate angagement in getting incomes from agriculture. The searches show also the space differentiation of regions in the scope of agricultural production purposes. It is possible to isolate four groups of voivodeships; one with high developed agriculture, second with low developed agriculture, third with well developed agrarian structure and non agricultural economic activity, and fourth with declaining agriculture.

The paper presents results of survey on positive and negative determinants of agritourism activity in four chosen regions of Poland, namely in two regions in the Carpathian Mountains (Małopolska and Podkarpacie) and in two regions at the Baltic Sea coast (Pomerania and Western Pomerania). The owners of agritourism farms participated in the survey defined and estimated positive and negative determinates of agritourism development at the level of communes they function. According to the survey nature and landscape attractions, skills and knowledge of the entrepreneurs and personality characteristics of the entrepreneurs and their families are the most important and positive determinants of agritourism development in Poland.

The article presents the contribution of the A. Nobel Prize laureates in economics in the development of economic-and-agricultural sciences. In view of diversification of agricultural and economic sciences, attitudes towards agriculture represented by physiocrats, classics and neoclassic, the Author discussed the interest in this area of the following Nobel Prize Laureates: J. Tinbergen, R. Frisch, S. Kuznets, W. Leontief and particularly T. Schultz and W. Lewis.

In article there is a summary of doctor thesis entitled: Investment and Financial Sources versus Changes in the Vegetable Farms, which was made in Agricultural University in Poznań. Main goal was selecting the kinds of the investments and their financial sources on the vegetable farms and specifying the reason for the choice of the financial sources and the attitude to the investment activities. The research were made in the farms producing vegetables near Środa Wielkopolska and producing vegetables under cover near Pleszew.