Gospodarstwa rolne regionu nadmorskiego – konwergencja czy dywergencja

The process of modernization of agriculture under the Common Agricultural Policy has in view, among other things, the creation of economically stable and competitive farms. The aim of this paper is to verify the thesis that Poland’s membership in the European Union, implying a change in agricultural conditions, has resulted in diminishing the differences between farms. As a measure of diversification, confidence intervals for expected values were adopted. To assess the degree of differentiation in the farms’ development, the following criteria were applied: economic size of farms, net value added per a full-time employee, value of production, subsidies for operations. The number of farms over 16 ESU decreased, whilst the number of farms below the 8ESU increased. The research into farms, categorized by economic size, revealed increased diversity in terms of economic size and net value added per person. The production value showed decreased diversification of such agricultural activities as permanent crops and grain-fed animals.