LUDWIK STASZYŃSKI
West German Landers are visited every year by slightly less that 1,000 pairs of white storks. On the territory of eastern Germany, close to four thousand stork pairs settle, while in Poland, over 40,000 arrive during the summer vacation. Storks fly to Poland because they feel most at home here. In Poland their families are established and new generations are born.
Storks are a common phenomenon in Poland. They stay close to people and also enjoy their widespread affection. In order to encourage storks to settle, Polish peasants often build the birds a comfortable nest.
The German guide Lutz Ribbe dedicated his publication to Polish storks. Ribbe was a friend of storks as well as a friend and ally of Polish farmers. This publication, issued also in Polish was given the title “In the Land of the Storks.” It is not, however, a ornithological dissertation but features very interesting and deep considerations on agriculture and not only in Poland. “Storks,” writes Ribbe in the introduction “are a beautiful by-product of the agricultural and production structure which still exists in Poland and which in Germany, as well as many other EU countries, already belongs to the dustbin of history. The majority of Polish agriculture still consists of small peasant farms, even if all of the governments to date gave no thought for their continuation and much less for offering these farms support…Throughout the country feelings of agricultural insecurity, similar to those which have been cultivated in other former socialist countries, were eagerly encouraged. These intentions to a large a extent were not successful and thanks to this the countryside retained an agrarian structure that is hard to find not only in Central and Eastern Europe…”
The author presents arguments that Polish agriculture in many respects is better than that of Western Europe – and not only for storks. “In the countries of the EU, the result of an intensification of farming is pollution of the land, water and air,” Ribbe writes. That is why there are no storks and other breeds of wild animals and plants. “In Poland they were established or retained thanks to the peasant economy, a real natural paradise,” he added.
This is not just a question of nature and storks but first and foremost people. Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire, in a dispatch from Warsaw a few years ago, wrote that “The EU should not bear the costs of adjusting Polish agriculture to the EU - it would be like throwing money away since the Polish countryside is poor and backward. Subsidizing produce doesn’t make sense either because this is not healthy produce and Polish peasants could lose their minds as a result of sudden wealth.” Maguire illustrated his correspondence with pictures illustrating that backwardness. One of them showed a woman holding a hoe in a beet field. It is an excellent illustration of how a peasant woman holding a hoe in a beet field looks.
The hoe is still used by some Polish farmers instead of chemical herbicides. It also gives thousands of farmers an occupation and means of life in a country within which they do not and for some time will not have a chance for any other kind of work.
The Reuters correspondent also made a big mistake by downgrading the quality of Polish farm produce. It is a shame that he didn’t stumble across the opinions of experts from the OECD who, in their report about the state of Polish agriculture published in 1995 in Paris, judged the quality of Polish produce very highly. They wrote that “the low level of harmful substances in produce is first and foremost a result of much lower use of chemical products for agricultural production in Poland in comparison with Western European countries…Polish agriculture uses on average two to three times less inorganic fertilizer and about seven times less pesticide that many countries of the OECD…The need for such produce is growing, which may be an opportunity for Poland to create a special niche in European agriculture.”
The authors of the OECD report refer to plans to restructure Polish agriculture and express fears “that private agriculture, which will be enlarged, specialized and more mechanized, will take greater advantage of fertilizers and chemical agents, which carries the risk of developments harmful for the environment.”
The transformations that took place in Poland after 1989 caused a distinct reduction in the use of inorganic fertilizers and chemical agents for protecting plants. Many farmers are unable to afford fertilizers and other chemicals that became more expensive at the same time agricultural incomes were shrinking.
Some of the political elite in Poland as well as a number of foreign experts prepared a plan for the restructurization and rapid modernization of Polish agriculture, intended to make the Polish countryside like that of the EU.
According to forecasts from the end of the 1990s, restructurization was supposed to be based on a three-fold reduction in the number of private farms and a large drop in agricultural employment in the next 10 years.
This program is now supposed to be more energetically implemented in Poland through the participation of the European Union Commission, which has taken up the reins of Polish agricultural policy. The restructurization will involve mainly changes on the market, liquidation, under the pretext of sanitation, of the majority of small and medium-sized processing plants and the takeover of the agricultural market by large industrial production facilities that require huge deliveries of uniform raw material. Farmers who own smaller plots won’t have anyone to sell their quality products. For example, among 800,000 cow owners, only 367,000 were given permission to sell milk in 2004!
These changes should not destroy, threaten or harm anyone. What storks, flying to and from Poland year after year over thousands of kilometer, have understood and appreciated for centuries, people must also learn to understand and appreciate.
If the plans for widespread changes in the countryside, which are to be imposed in a variety of ways, were implemented, the majority of Polish peasant families would suffer a painful blow. Consumers will also suffer from the gradual loss of a source of cheaper and healthier produce. Of course, the storks would also be threatened. The people planning restructurization never even tried to ask Polish farmers about their opinions. They are treated like the storks, which even in their wildest dreams are unaware of what awaits them. There are, however, grounds that fears of these threats will be replaced by hope. The source of that hope may be the 15 countries of the EU prior to expansion, where criticism of industrial agriculture is growing. Trends are emerging for the limitation of intensification and concentration of production. There is a greater wish to support organic (ecological) farming, attach greater respect to the needs of consumers, emphasize quality and not quantity, develop local produce markets and protect the social and cultural values of the countryside. As a matter of fact, this system already exists in Poland and shouldn’t be tampered with.
