Types of EU Countries Agrarian Structure, Based on Fuzzy Structure Classification

Abstract

The paper identifies the types of agrarian structure of the European Union member states, based on the fuzzy classification method. The research is based on the Eurostat data regarding the number of agricultural holdings by areal groups and the utilised agricultural area they represent in different countries. Poland and Romania belong to the EU countries with the smallest average size of utilised agricultural area (UAA) per farm, and, as a consequence, semi-subsistence holdings have a dominant position (Popescu and Condei, 2015; Timofti et al., 2015) in both countries. The following areal groups were taken into account in the analysis below: up to 2 ha of UAA, 2-5 ha, 5-10 ha, 10-20 ha, 20-50 ha, 50 ha and more. The use of fuzzy classification allowed identifying groups of countries with similar distribution of the number of holdings in different areal groups, as well as the area they represent. As a result, four types of agrarian structure of the EU countries were identified.