Abstract:

Income is an important element of everyone's life. It allows meeting human needs. In the process of carrying out individual needs related to ambitions, independence or earning income, the decisions are taken to search for new income sources. There are many more incentives stimulating such decisions and everyone considers them individually. The standard of living in rural areas is lower than the one in a city, and hence the lower income level of the rural population and higher unemployment rate. Increasingly fewer farms obtain income from agricultural activity alone, thus the importance of other income sources is growing. In addition, a greater willingness to take up hired labour or run non-agricultural business activities is observed among farmers. The purpose of this study was to define and describe the basic income sources of individual agricultural holdings in Poland. In addition, the determinants influencing decisions about searching for other income sources by farmers were briefly characterized. The research problem was addressed based on the subject literature analysis. The basic research methods used by the author were: the critical subject literature review and formal methods including the tabular description method.